The Tribune

BAHAMIAN national team player Mark St Fort has progressed to the highest level of basketball in Japan for the upcoming 2020-21 season.

St Fort recently agreed to a deal with SeaHorses Mikawa of the Japanese B-League. He spent last season in the country’s third division, the B3-League with the Saitama Broncos, where he averaged 17.9 points and 9.8 rebounds per game. The B3-League has eleven teams made up of de facto semi-professional teams. The Mikawa Seahorses are based in Kariya, Aichi. They were 20-23 last season before the year was prematurely brought to an end due to the COVID-19 pandemic. St Fort will join Americans Kyle Collinsworth and Davante Gardner as the only foreigners on the roster.

The Seahorses begin their 2020-2021 season on October 3 against the Shibuya Sun Rockers.

St Fort last appeared as a member of the national team at the FIBA Americas World Cup Qualifiers in 2017. He also represented the Bahamas at the Central American and Caribbean Games in Barranquilla (Colombia) where he averaged 11.2 points per game through five games.

His professional career has spanned four continents, including North America, South America, Europe and Asia.

Prior to the Broncos, St Fort previously played in France with Tremblay in the NM2 League, in the Premiere Basketball League with Rochester, in the North American Basketball League with Florida, with Samahaaj in the Bahrain Premier League and also in Colombia and Thailand.

Collegiately, he played at Savannah State and eventually graduated from Warner University in 2013.

Mark St Fort’s former collegiate head coach and current coach of the Royals Sean Hanrahan said in an Alumni Spotlight on St Fort featured in a Sun Conference publication, “Mark is having a great professional career. His work ethic and positive attitude have paved a road for success and I’m sure it will continue for many years to come. He always brought high energy combined with a great attitude. Mark made coaching a lot of fun. His teammates loved being around him. I look forward to following him and the continuation of his career.”

St. Fort joins fellow Bahamian, Kadeem Coleby in the B-League. Coleby will enter his fourth season with the Akita Northern Happinets.

In the B-League, each team plays a 60-game regular season schedule that consists of 36 games against teams within their own conference and 24 games against teams in the other conference. Eight teams qualify for the playoffs, which includes the top three teams from each conference, and the next two teams with the best records, regardless of their conference, as wild cards. The playoffs consist of quarterfinal, semifinal, and final rounds, with a best-of-three format in each round.