President of Nigeria Women Basketball Organisation based in the United States, Nwoye Chioma, has set aside N150,000, N100,000 and N50,000 respectively as prizes to be won by young women who participated in the first basketball tournament the body organized for young women in Delta state.
Over the weekend, Chioma Nwoye led a team of basketball experts including coaches in Delta to the Stephen Keshi stadium in Asaba where a number of young ladies were featured in a basketball tournament. She told journalists that the outing was the first in Delta organized by the NGO.
She said the Nigerian Women Basketball Organisation was founded in the United States with the objective of empowering women and young ladies in sports, just as she said that the basket ballers could still be in school while participating in the sports.
She said participation could expose them to scholarship in the United States, a development that change their lives for good and eventually relocate to the western world.
The United States based Nigerian the prizes as listed were for first, second and third winners, noting that the event is to make the women relax, have fun and play. She added that the event is an avenue to harvest talents, send videos abroad and scholarship could come to lucky ones.
She said: “The opportunity is we talk to coaches, schools and colleges. When we get these talents, we talk to coaches abroad and they can get scholarship to leave Nigeria. This is one of the opportunity.
“We are starting small, but planning to go bigger. This is the first tournament. Thereafter, we will expand. We really want to start from the half court, then, expand.
“When we see these talents, they are useful to the state, it’s all about women. I’m so passionate about it. I’m a full package when it comes to this game.”
On how the young talents were harvested, she said: “We did registration to get the participants but it was free. We worked with the coaches. There was no fee, nobody collected money from anybody. It was an open competition.
“We streamlined the age range so that we can catch the young ones. One experienced player in every team. We agreed that any player that has won the green white green, whether under 16, 18, 22, we categorise that as an experienced player. We have one of such in each team.”
She told journalists at the stadium that: “I’m passionate about basketball. I see brighter future in it. I went to the US as a coach. The truth is we have talents but we do not have enough platforms to showcase these talents.
“I’m passionate about these skills. I really want to see these kids doing better than I do. I then thought we can put something together to help discover their skills. That’s why I floated this organizationin the US.”
