In my playing days I was always taught to work hard in the summer months because not only will a good fundamental level and individual skills be maintained and possibly improved upon but also some more gains could be achieved as other players might completely rest in the meantime and not work on their game (thus wasting some valuable time) and as a consequence summer will be a good opportunity to bridge any existent gaps there might be between themselves and other established players.

Young developing players have a number of camps to choose from this summer and the six week basketball activity organized by the Basketball Promotion Unit (under the jurisdiction of the Malta Basketball Association) is one of them.

The Basketball Promotion Unit (BPU) holds regular classes for primary school children during the scholastic year. As a result, many young students have shown great interest towards basketball and have come forward to start playing the game at an organised level.

This interest has encouraged the BPU to launch the forthcoming summer camp with the motto ‘Let’s have fun with friends. Let’s have basketball’.

This camp will commence on the 2nd of July and come to an end on the 13th of August. There will be three weekly sessions on Monday, Wednesday and Friday respectively and the session will run from 9.30 a.m. up to 12.30 p.m.

The minimum age for players is of 8 years and the camp will also be beneficial for complete beginners to the game. In fact, the main aims behind this summer basketball activity are both to attract new talent towards the Ta’ Qali pavilion and also for those who already participate in the sport of basketball to be able to keep on working in the summer months and sharpen their fundamental skills.

According to the organisers, a typical day in this camp will include different activities, all related to basketball. Obviously there will be the training element where drills on fundamentals with individual attention will be carried out.

However the young players will also have the opportunity to watch films from top level games especially snippets and games from the NBA.

In the latter parts of the day there will be fun competitions like 3 versus 3 and free-throw shooting games as well as mini-tournaments. These game-based competitions will be a good way how the young players could show what they are learning combined with a fun-competitive element. At the end, the finalists will be awarded prizes for accomplishment.

All the sessions in this BPU camp will be held at the Basketball complex in Ta’ Qali on the FIBA approved parquet floor and with six basketball rings available for the camp’s practice sessions.

These basketball activities in this summer camp (more information can be obtained from the MBA’s offices or on e-mail [email protected]) will be conducted by the Maltese National Mens’ team coach Bruno Di Pietrantonio as well as by Leonard Falzon who is the head of the Basketball Promotion Unit. These two will be further assisted by some other qualified basketball coaches who will be made known in the coming days.

Basketball in Monaco GSSE

Most of the news last week was dedicated on the Small Nations Games being held in Monaco. We heard a lot of reports and comments on the participation of the Maltese contingent but I will not make any reference to the latter except to congratulate all the local participants for giving their best.

I will talk about the basketball competition that was held in the games. Some people may not be ware but there was a men’s basketball competition in the games. Only the women’s competition was not held.

Malta did not take part in the men’s category due to its (either MOC or MBA or both together) own decision. As is the norm in these games, the basketball competition was a tough nut with this time, six counties taking part. Winning a medal in this male category (no offence to the women’s category where there are usually less teams) is no mean feat as the games are difficult and intense.

This time round, any probably unknown to many, including basketball enthusiasts, the basketball competition, played on a round-robin format league on five days, had a sad ending. The last game on the program was between the two gold-medal favourites (these are usually always the favourites and I had the opportunity to referee the final in 2003 between the same countries) Cyprus and Iceland.

On the eve of this ‘final’, Cyprus were unexpectedly beaten 76-73 by Luxembourg and this meant that the Cypriots had to win by 17 points against Iceland to win the gold medal.

However this last match of the tournament was never finished as the game was abandoned almost 3 minutes from the end with the score 78-72 for Cyprus.

According to my referee sources and also through internet, there was a big fight that is usually not easily seen. Just before the violence erupted Aris Koronidis was disqualified from the game after trying to confront one of the referees, while seconds later Panayiotis Trisokkas got into a close physical encounter with Brenton Birmingham of Iceland. Local police was forced to intervene in order to stop any further violence.

It seems that one of the referees (both of them happened to be good friends of mine) was physically handled and pushed to the ground.

The game was registered with the official score 2-0 in favour of Iceland, literally providing them with the gold medal at the competition.

Following these incidents, the Cyprus National Olympic Committee decided to withdraw the national basketball team from the games and also denounced the bronze medal the team should have taken after finishing third in the competition.

As a result, Luxembourg earned the silver medal, while San Marino, who finished fourth, picked up the bronze medal. Andorra and Monaco finished in that order in the next two placings.

According to reports, although Cypriot athletes dominated the 12th Games of the Small States of Europe by winning a total of 94 medals out of which 36 were gold medals, in front of Iceland who won a total 74 medals, the incident at the final stage of the basketball tournament left a bad feeling and the same Cypriots will surely aim to make amends in two year’s time on their home soil..

Next week I will dedicate a part of the column to analyse further the basketball competition.