Basketball Fiji raised a little over $4000 after a walkathon drive on Saturday morning. Parents and players participated in the 10km walk which will be used to cater for the preparation expenses for the National under-20 Youth Men's and Women's teams for the upcoming FIBA Oceania Youth under-20 Tournament in New Caledonia from October 30- November 7. "We are very grateful for this sort of help that we have," said Basketball Fiji's development officer, Laisiasa Puamau. Basketball Fiji will be sending a 35-member squad in October and started with preparations two weeks ago. These funds will be used for paying and hiring training venues assist with transport funds for the Western squad and they also have plans of having vests and water bottles printed. They will also be registering two men's and two women's teams for the Boston tournament this weekend. And on to their basketball development programs, Puamau was happy to announce that they just began their primary school program. "We started with LDS primary and we had around 50 participants which is a good start," Puamau said. "They were very interested in the sport which was a good sign. "We are very excited about this and we hope that we can further the sport." Today, they will be conducting their program at Stella Maris and then will be at the International Primary on Friday. However, every journey will have its obstacles and one major hurdle that the association is trying to overcome is lack of equipments like balls. "We had ordered a lot of our equipments but they were lost in the fires at the Williams and Goslings ware-house," he said.

Source: The Fiji Times Online

Wednesday 10th March, 2010