It Was No Rumor

5:58 AM Ellis 3 Comments

A session of boys who showed up

Accra - I didn't hear the radio ad myself, neither did I read the publication in the Daily Guide. What was this about? I got a couple of calls on Friday morning from fans and friends asking me if I knew about a Ghanaian who's returned to town and wanted to scout and probably take some players to the States. So I did my own little research to confirm if there was some truth in the rumor but nobody seemed to really know what this was all about, not even the GBBA.

The event was scheduled for Saturday, 9th Oct. 2010 at 10am. I had spent the whole morning at Lebanon House, taking photos of Galaxy's practice.The good, bad and ugly of Basketball players started trickling in from as early as 8:30am. It was the biggest collection of basketball players I had seen gathered outside an official league event. By the end of the day close to 80 boys showed up to exhibit their skills and possibly get recruited.

I then had a chat with Kwaku Amoako. Kwaku is an assistant basketball coach at Miramar College in San Diego. kwaku grew up playing basketball and played on his high school and college teams. He also spent some time playing semi-pro ball but decided to go into coaching once he realized he could make it pro.

"What got me to come here is the number of times I was asked if I knew any good players somewhere", was his reply when I asked him "why Ghana?". "I thought of coming home to see what I can do to help and give more kids opportunities to play basketball at a higher level" , he also mentioned. According to him, this was just a short trip to see whether there was any basketball being played at all in Ghana. "I'm really impressed with the amount of talent and skill, because not many of these kids have gone though any real structures to be taught the game", he said when I asked of his impression so far. He said his next trip is schedule somewhere April 2011.

Theophilus Mensah is a Ghanaian basketball documentarian who has followed the game in Ghana for close to a decade. He travels across the counrty documenting all aspects of basketball culture in Ghana. His work was recently featured in Roads and Kingdoms.

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3 comments:

  1. Deon Wills GhOctober 11, 2010 at 9:26 AM

    wow..this great news..!

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousOctober 11, 2010 at 8:38 PM

    great start n awaiting the first to benefit

    ReplyDelete
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    ReplyDelete

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