As the global coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) continues to pause sports around the region, the president of the Caribbean Basketball Confederation, Gylne Clarke, believes one of the benefits for his association arising from the crisis has been the ability to undertake financial savings.
Clarke said the CBC had not incurred expenditure as it related to travel, accommodations and meals because no basketball was being played within the region at the moment.
“This year we were able to save quite a bit because we would not have had the level of expenditure for meetings and different programs. The online training is a blessing because that way we don’t have to pay for travel, accommodations, and meals for the instructors,” Clarke pointed out.
With most sports around the world having restarted in bio-secure “bubbles”, Clarke said the task before regional basketball authorities would be funding such infrastructure.
“We are still impacted at this present time by the COVID. Some countries are at different stages of coping with the COVID,” he explained.
“I recently did a survey with some of the member countries. A lot of them are limited in their participation in any competitive activity because of different governmental restrictions. So, it continues to be a challenge going into 2021.
“At the FIBA Americas level, they just reintroduced basketball in one of the leagues. It was played in a bubble in Uruguay. The challenge in our region is going to be the level of funding required to host such competition in this region.
“Quite a few counties are restricted to travel and again that would continue to be a challenge.”
He added: “What we will have to do is a workaround. We are hoping to have a meeting with our executives to decide the way forward for 2021. Even our assembly coming up in March which we were scheduled to host in Aruba, we have made a decision that we are going to have that online.”
With hardly any basketball being played around the Caribbean region, Clarke expressed worry about the standard of the competition once action resumed.
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