The Tribune

By BRENT STUBBS

Senior Sports Reporter

bstubbs@tribunemedia.net

WHILE the visiting collegiate teams come here to compete in the Battle 4 Atlantis, there is a local tournament that follows that provides an opportunity for the local schools to mesh their talent against teams from the United States and Canada on the same basketball court at Atlantis.

For the second consecutive year, the KSA Events Basketball Sand Jam was staged over a three-week period, running from November 28 to December 3, December 3-7 and wrapping up from December 10-14.

Whittington Brown, the local representative, has been responsible for putting the local tournament together for the international organisers Todd and Kelly Hayes who have their headquarters based in Orlando, Florida.

“KSA is the same tournaments that they have in ESPN in Orlando. They branched it off and brought a tournament here,” Brown said. “Last year, only four Bahamian teams participated, but this year we had a total of 15 Bahamian teams that participated against the high schools that came down.

“Before any of the local schools play, we have to get the necessary certification from each federation in order for them to play. Once approval is granted, the local schools can then play.”

Although KSA features games in baseball, volleyball, field hockey, football, basketball and lacrosse, the Bahamas is only designated to host basketball games, but Brown said they are looking at branching out in the future to include more of the sporting disciplines, once they can secure the proper facility like they have at Atlantis to host the games.

This year, only two of the local teams won against their international counterparts. The CI Gibson Rattlers, coached by Kevin ‘KJ’ Johnson, defeated Ralston Valley out of Colorado in their senior boys’ matchup on December 6 and the St Augustine’s College Big Red Machine won 41-16 over Adam Scott out of Canada in a senior girls’ game on November 29.

In some of the other games played by local teams, Mountain Vista from Colorado knocked off the HO Nash Lions 61-48 in their junior girls’ game on December 11 and Erie Cathedral Prep knocked off St Augustine’s College 61-48 in their senior boys’ game.

On December 12, Mountain Valley came back and held off Harbour Island junior girls 49-36 and Upper St Clair out of Philadelphia won 47-34 over the Queen’s College Comets senior boys.

Then on Saturday, December 13, Mountain Vista out of Colorado pounded the Kingsway Academy Saints 45-29 in a junior girls game and Korah Collegiate out of Canada pulled off a 65-52 win over Kingsway Acdemy senior boys.

“All of the local teams were eager to play because a lot of them were at the top level of their divisions and their coaches wanted to see them play against a higher level of competition so they can see exactly where they are,” Brown said. “So it was almost like an instructional guide for these schools to see what they were doing wrong in their respective school leagues.”

Brown said the only problem the local schools experienced was the fact that they didn’t have sufficient games to play against the visiting schools. But he indicated that KSA will be returning next year and they hope to continue building on the success of the first two years.

Additionally, Brown said KSA also provides scholarships to the local players ranging from $1,000-$10,000 and that is something that they hope will be an incentive for the players as they look forward to the future.