The Tribune

By RENALDO DORSETT

Sports Reporter

rdorsett@tribunemedia.net

NOW hosted in a new venue, Caribbean Sports Agency Basketball Academy continues its mission of “promoting education through basketball.”

The weekly, developmental basketball academy is described by its director - Marvin Henfield - as a faith-based, non-profit organisation that teaches basketball fundamentals and life skills to young men and women between the ages of five and 18.

Its new venue is at the Anatol Rodgers High School Gymnasium each Saturday, and its new spring semester opened on January 17, with just under 100 student athletes in attendance.

“The first week was better than I expected and I say that because sometimes when you have changes during a seven-month break, things happen. I wasn’t sure what the support level would be like from our parents and our athletes, but it turned out great. We had 39 junior academy athletes and 43 senior academy athletes. Just under 100 athletes and that’s our goal every semester, to reach that 100 mark. There were a number of returning athletes that did not make it out on week one and people have continued to register so we are confident that we will get there in due time.”

After being hosted at Remnant Tabernacle the past few years, CSA was forced to relocate, a task Henfield said proved arduous, but beneficial in the long run.

“It was extremely difficult, we don’t have a lot of facilities that were conducive to bringing in new events and all of our other gymnasiums, all the other ones were pretty established with events so that left us on the outside looking in. Unfortunatley our national stadium still remains virtually inaccessible to locals because of the price tag attached so the search was quite a task,” he said.

“What I am most pleased about is the new venue is ideal for what we want to do because it provides more floor space, the new venue also has more goals and more baskets. All in all the dissappointment turned out to be something that was better for the programme and for the kids so it was worth it.”

He added that it is the mission of the academy to identify, harness and develop the God-given talents of each young person they come in contact with and continue to improve the process, including using technological advancements to build a better relationship with parents and athletes.

“We have now restructured the process because now we have a good complement of athletes throughout the ages. It is our aim to challenge each person to use the game of basketball to improve their physical, spiritual, and social well-being through the attainment of a college education. We try to be scaleable, we don’t want to outgrow ourselves, from a personal level we are in the process of securing and building our own facility, in terms of the message, CSA now has its own app which is available for download, which gives us more enhanced communication experience, more engaging experience to better communicate with parents and athletes,” he said.

“It is also our mission to develop character beyond the game of basketball by imparting godly principles and values from the Word of God. It is our endeavour to equip each person that we teach, mentor and train with the tools required to successfully compete in the biggest game of all, the game of life.”

According to its website, www.mycsabasketball.com since August 2009 through January 2015 - CSA has trained, mentored and ministered to more than 2,800 athletes throughout the country.

The current CSA Basketball Academy semester will run until March 28. The Junior Academy (ages 5-12) is hosted from 1pm to 3:30pm and the Senior Academy (ages 13+) from 4pm-7pm.