A Summer League for Semi Pro Basketball Athletes

Since taking over the leadership of the federation, Jacob Leslie and his team have been pushing full steam ahead with basketball programs to develop the sport.  Recently, along with the National Sports Council, a primary school basketball competition is underway; there are the regional tryouts for the male U-sixteen team that you just heard about that’s taking place this weekend and then there is something for the semi-pro basketball athletes in the pipelines. There will be a summer league for those athletes ahead of a full return in January 2023. B.B.F. President Leslie shares some details.

Jacob Leslie

Jacob Leslie, President, Belize Basketball Federation

“We are supposed to have a summer league for the semi pro athletes. The country has been missing that level of basketball for some time now and so what we will try to do is have a summer league for them, to have them engage and put back in shape – they haven’t been playing ball for over two years – and then we pull out the full season that is normal from January to May. So we are going to run that summer league from July to October, have the guys recover for a month or so, get back into training camp and then start the full season in January. I think it is long overdue. Major concerns are financial support. The economic has collapsed and so we just have to figure out a way how we can be creative. We don’t want to use that as an excuse to not engage our athletes. So it is just find creative ways how we can approach sponsors to get what we want and to give them what they need.”