The Tribune

By BRENT STUBBS

Senior Sports Reporter

bstubbs@tribunemedia.net

AFTER ten exciting weeks of competition, the Urban Renewal and Street Legends Basketball Tournament will come to a close at the BTC Cynthia ‘Mother’ Pratt Basketball Park on Saturday night.

The championship game in all four divisions will be contested as organiser Winton Russell and his team take the action from the gymnasium and into the community.

In the baby legends’ division, starting at 6pm, Golden Gates have already clinched their berth. They are now awaiting the winner of tonight’s match-up at the Mother Pratt Park between the Englerston Urban Renewal Center West and the Nassau Village Urban Renewal West.

That will be followed by the girls’ division at 7pm with the two teams in the final having already been determined. The game will see the Fox Hill Urban Renewal Center take on the Kemp Road Urban Renewal Center.

The 19-and-under junior boys championship game is also set and will feature the Bahamas Waste Tall Pines Teleos Christian Academy School against the Nassau Village Urban Renewal Center team. That game is set to start at 8pm.

And in the men’s division at 9pm, the Dr. Daniel Johnson’s Carmichael Road Surgeons will wait to play the winner of tonight’s match-up between the Englerston Urban Renewal West, representing Cynthia Pratt, against the Kendal Major’s Garden Hillsiders.

“I feel the programme over exceeded our expectations,” Russell said.

“One of the things the commissioner did this year was to take the games out of the gym and put them in the community. Since we did that, we had hundreds of people come out and watch the games.

“The community came out and they got a chance to see exactly who was playing for them and they really took pride in their teams actually winning. It felt more live and exuberant and it really felt like a part of the inner city. It really gave us a sense of pride. It was a major hit.”

Just as they opened on Saturday, June 28 with the Urban Renewal Band and a highly intense battle between Garden Hills and Nassau Village, Russell said they expect the grand finale to be just as competitive on August 28.

“They expect for these games to go into overtime and I expect for the communities of Englerston and for all of the other communities to be out to see the level of competition that we have within our inner cities,” he said. “So I expect for a really grand closing on Saturday night.”