By: Kamohelo Ntsebeng
Maseru
On March 29th-30th 2024, there will be a basketball tournament in Mohale’s Hoek. The organizer of the tournament Bokang Pharela says the primary aim for organizing this tournament is to bring together the teams and for players to network with various teams from different districts. The teams will therefore have a camping experience as they will be there for 3 days.
The coach of Bokamoso, Samuel Nts’ekhe explains the Bokamoso program to be centered around taking the youth off streets, thus far making three team categories that are divided according to age. Within 5 years of consistency and participationin all activities of the sport, the mission is to make the national team and as such are on the journey for grooming the team.
Nts’ekhe declares having participated in a couple of tournaments, including one tournament in Botswana.
Due to precautions against Covid-19 saga and inconveniences experienced through the league, the team had to start a competence track on a clean slate despite having participated internationally as well.
One of the players and coach of Bokamoso sharks, Khotso Khakhe reinforces the plan to develop players in such a way that they are able to participate in national teams. He exclaims the primary reason to partake in the Easter tournament as their main goal to win the championship. This is since having fallen short to the National University of Lesotho (NUL) rovers last year. This year however, they “are content that this time they are ready to shine.”
Furthermore, the Coach of Lerotholi Polytechnic team Rets’elisitsoe Mosaase says to have participated in a number of tournaments, including one Easter tournament where they obtained the first positions in both categories of boys and girls.
The boys team is the current defending championships of the national league. Mosaase continues to say that they are striving on making sure that this team becomes as unstoppable as in previous years.
He declares the tournament to be a good opportunity for them as the team to network with other teams as well as build relevant investments in the form of relationships.
Simply Talent Recreations is a private company that works with academies, to promote the brand, owner and founder of the team Ts’epo Tjela says they introduced Basketball two seasons back. They then played at the leagues where the team claimed 2nd place. He, like other coaches has aspirations of eventually realizing financial investments of the sport.