The inaugural edition of the Organised Basketball Network (OBN) Hoop Summit basketball tournament kicked off on Saturday.
The one-week tournament which is organised by former NBA star Obinna Ekezie, CEO, OBN, and holding at the OBN Academy Lekki, Ajah, comprise four teams with each team made up of 12 Players.
Two teams from the four that will feature, The Future and The Mariners faced each other in the opening ceremony on Saturday.
Players under the age of 18 and 15 will take part in the tournament which will end on Saturday August 7.
Speaking about the OBN Hoop Summit, Ekezie said:”Today we are having our inaugural OBN Hoop Summit tournament. We have four youth team franchises that are participating today. One of the teams is call The Future who are playing against The Mariners.
“This is really a key milestone in our development of grassroot basketball in Nigeria. We want to create suitable tournament where young kids under the age of 18, under the age of 15 can participate in organise basketball and that’s what OBN stands for ‘Organised Basketball Network.
“And that way we can increase their experience playing the game, get better as players and take their game to high school of College in America for those that can earn a scholarship.
“oday is the first day of the games. Our next day is Monday and Tuesday for the group rounds, we will get to the semi-finals on Thursday and the final on Saturday.
“Each team is made up of 12 Players, two coaches coaching each team. And most of the players for the summit are those who sign up for our camp, some of them came out for the trials and made the team and we selected them and put them in different teams and that’s why they are participating today.”
Ekezie added:”Our plan is to pick talents from the summit and give then scholarship. We’ve already had three kids get scholarship at IBM, we announced that several weeks ago.
“The plan here is to identify kids, develop them and if our scouting partners in the US show interest in them obviously we will get them scholarship.”
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