Nikolai Mills and Jadon Daniel of the Stories of Success (SOS) Basketball Academy, Spartans TT duo Nkosi Corbin and Donte Hazzard, Detour Shak Attack's Nwadiki Felix and Johnathan Thomas of Brian Chase Academy were the leading players emerging from the second edition of the Spartans TT Sports Club March Mayhem Basketball Skills Clinic.
The six players comprised an All-Star team from the camp which was held on the weekend of March 9-10 at the Jean Pierre Complex in Mucurapo, Port-of-Spain, with some 40 young basketballers from ten different clubs across Trinidad getting the opportunity to train under the guidance of coach Mark Cook of the USA and six local coaches. Some of the other clubs represented were 500 Hawks, Matthew Pierre Academy, New Age Lions and Tunapuna Tigers.
Coach Cook said, "These kids are blessed with talent. All I’m trying to do is create additional opportunities for them to see where basketball can take them, it could be to a full scholarship, a job, a oversee contract, the sky is the limit with the wealth of talent these kids have."
The young basketballers were put through a number of drills in different stations to work on different fundamentals of the game of basketball - dribbling, shooting, passing and agility. They were then split into eight teams and games were done over the two-day period. This format allowed the players from different clubs to use their skill sets to assist each other. Each team was seeded after day one and played in a knock out series on day two.
The organiser of the event Garvin Warwick, president of Spartans TT said, "All I'm trying to do is create opportunities to change the lives of these young kids. Give them the opportunity to compete among the best in their age groups. I’m glad that some of the coaches took the opportunity to send their players and hopefully next year we will get more clubs involved."