Latest News
Jamaica Rising Stars Camp hopes to improve ‘fundamental skills’
August 10, 2023
Technical Director of the national under-17 basketball programme, Wayne Dawkins, also the founder of PHASE 1 Academy, organisers of the Rising Stars Camp, believes the young players are receiving the information presented to them.
The camp, which enters the fourth of its six days, is at the Montego Bay Community College and is geared towards developing young players from 11 to 16 years old, and, according to Dawkins, the feedback since day one has been great.
"Our group is half local, half international, and we have close to 40 kids in the camp, so that's really exciting. We have kids ages 11-16, which is really important in the development years," said Dawkins.
In a recent Gleaner article titled 'NBA Mike agent sees natural athletes in Jamaica', NBA agent Mike George said Jamaica has the talent to become a force to be reckoned with and said skills development needed to be done at an earlier age, which prompted Dawkins to consider using age 11 as the starting point for the camp.
According to the technical director, 11 is a pivotal stage in basketball development.
"That's absolutely correct, and even if we can go younger, we will do that. Age 11 is such a pivotal development age that if they go too far beyond that age, their coordination development becomes more difficult to recover. It's not just about the basketball skill with the ball but the fundamental movement of a basketball player that they start to lose ground on," Dawkins explained.
Jamaica's under-17 boys recently returned from the Centrobasket tournament in Belize, where they finished sixth and Dawkins sees this latest camp as another move to improve local skills and be better prepared for competitions.
"Countries like Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic have a system that goes down to the youth age. By the time we compete against them, those countries have years of competing and developing together and then it's just not realistic for us to try and put the country and kids in those positions. It's just not fair.
"People from the outside don't know why we're performing poorly, and when they don't understand, they don't want to support us. This is to show the world that we're taking the necessary steps to close that gap between us and the Puerto Ricos of this world," he added.
The ongoing camp is conducted by NBA skills trainers Darren McLinton and Ibn Muhammed. Dawkins added that this camp will allow local players to see a future in the sport.
"For these kids, it's a chance for them to see if they can catch up to their peers and say, 'Here are some things that are in place to help me'," said Dawkins.
