Over 150 girls between the ages of 13 and 18 years took part in this year’s “Her Time To Play” basketball leadership summit in Kumasi.
The two-day event held at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, was put together by Seed Academy Ghana and the NBA Africa CSR Department, under the auspices of former Ghanaian NBA star, Pops Mensah Bonsu.
The first day of the event was an off-court leadership summit. The tone was practical, empowering and community rooted aimed at building voice, leadership and holistic growth through the unifying power of sport.
Various speakers on the day took the girls through many aspects of life, including career pathways in and beyond sports, confidence, voice and identity as well as the mental wellness and body literacy.
According to Pops Mensah Bonsu, the leadership summit is meant to guide the young girls who are unable to play professionally to have a career path and a well-defined future away from the sport.
“We wanted to provide images of success for these young girls in seeing women in their likeness, holding high positions or who have succeeded in the world and want to be able to inspire this younger generation by showing them the steps that they took in getting to where they are now”, he said.
The second day of the event saw the girls going through various practical exercises aimed at improving their on-court skills. The total output, confidence, talent and skill displayed by the girls was outstanding and amazing to watch.
Meanwhile, the former NBA star who played for teams including the Dallas Mavericks, San Antonio Spurs, and Toronto Raptors revealed that he got encouraged to move the event beyond Accra after over four hundred young girl basketball players turned up for the first event when they were looking to have between 80 and 100 girls for the exercise.
“During my time in the NBA I was always looking for ways to give back to my community, especially in Ghana because we don’t see many Ghanaians in the NBA. When I was playing, I always wanted to put my name behind something but I could never do it because I was always tied up with playing.
“But once I retired, we came back to Ghana and in 2019 I did my first camp in Accra for about 80-100 kids thinking maybe only a few kids will show up but surprisingly 400 kids showed up.
“That was impressive and it was great to see that there was a culture of basketball here and we just had to build on it with resources and infrastructure,” he emphasized.
Meanwhile, Pops Mensah says they intend to carry out the exercise across other parts of the country to help in harnessing girl basketball talents for the nation.
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