The basketball league came to an end this past weekend after a rough financial year.
The determined basketball league managed to make it to the end of the year, with the teams displaying loyalty to their sport and pulling through to the end, despite the financial hurdles the league was faced with.
In an interview with The Telegraph, the Public Relations Officer of the Basketball association, Thuli Jankey, noted that they had the last games over the weekend.
He asserted that though the league had the sponsorship challenge, it all went well.
“Despite the major challenge that we faced, which is lack of sponsorship for running of the league, all went well,” said Jankey.
He stated that one of the other challenges they faced was lack of fixture honouring by the teams, adding that it is an issue that the association had since discussed at great length.
“Some teams did not honour their fixtures and during our meeting that we held at Francistown, we re-looked at fines for teams that behaved like this. Though we fined them for not showing up for games, the fines were too low and teams kept on missing games, knowing that they would be able to easily pay the fines,” he said.
Jankey went on to say that they want to review the fines so that it does not become a norm for teams not to honour their fixtures.
“We also discovered that the main problem teams had that ended up making them miss their games was transport. Travelling was the main problem for teams but that should not act as an excuse because we have made our fixtures in such a way that teams do not travel a lot,” he added.
He further said they will be hosting the championships this coming weekend in which top four teams from the male league and two top teams from the female league will battle it out.
“This weekend we will be hosting a championship. The championship will run from the 27th to the 28th and will continue again on the 4th and 5th of December where top two teams will meet for the number one spot of the championship,” he said. “Troopers, Burtons, Police and BDF V are the male teams that will be in for the championships whilst the female teams will only be BDF V and Police. These are the teams that made it to the number one and fourth spot, respectively, in the just ended league,” Jankey added.
