Dawkins sees bright future for youth basketball

NEWLY appointed technical director of Jamaica’s under-17 basketball programme, Wayne Dawkins, is salivating at the prospects he has at his disposal which he believes will take the country to new heights on the world stage. Dawkins stated that Jamaica is blessed with a plethora of different types of body size, which augurs well for the basketball programme he intends to develop.

“Nobody disputes that Jamaica has some of the best runners and jumpers on the planet and we see that in track and field. Jamaica is unique in a way where you still get a lot of height and size, it’s like they’re built to play basketball so you get any type of athlete you want in Jamaica,” he said.

Dawkins is of the belief that his work begins immediately to make up for lost time as a majority of the local players missed an extended amount of playing time due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in comparison to their North American counterparts who still managed to remain fairly active throughout the global lockdown.

“The young generation of players that will make up our junior programme missed almost three years, so there’s a lot of development to do as they’re still very raw. The number of games that they would have played, to this day, is still very limited, whereas kids in North America didn’t miss a beat,” Dawkins stated.

His first order of business will be to help get his players in proper shape ahead of July’s FIBA Centrobasket tournament which will be hosted in Belize. Dawkins firmly posited that the team heading to Belize isn’t going to make up numbers, but are aiming to leave an indelible mark.

“We are going to win. We’re aren’t going up against the usual powerhouses, like the North Americans or the Europeans, we’re going up against other Caribbean teams who’ve also struggled during COVID, just like us, so they’re not at any advantage or have consistency of play over us,” he added.

Dawkins, founder of the P.H.A.S.E 1 Elite 1 Caribbean Basketball League, also said that a great amount of work is needed to get players into basketball from a younger age with development from the primary-school level. He believes learning the game at the high-school level for a junior programme is a recipe for disaster and counters proper development.

“We need to get some primary school leagues going. In North America, you have kids that are 10 years old that know how to read screens and switch multiple defences and understand various offensive schemes. Our kids aren’t being introduced to that until 13 years old which is way too late for a junior programme. We need to introduce them to the game early so by the time they get to high school they have a much better foundation,” Dawkins said.

orane.buchanan@gleanerjm.com