The much talked about second edition of the Organized Basketball Network (OBN) Hoop Summit commenced on Saturday at the OBN Academy, Ajah, Lagos.
The one-week competition which will end on Saturday, 8 August 2022, will see six teams and over 50 players participate.
Present at the opening day of the competition were founder of OBN and former NBA star Obinna Ekezie and Senior Special Assistant on Education to the Governor of Lagos State, Adetola Salau.
And in the first game that was decided in the opening day, OBN Elite defeated The Future 92 points to 54.
Speaking at the first day of the tournament, Ekezie expressed his delight for this year’s summit.
“We are very excited to have the second edition of the OBN Hoop Summit 2022, the first one was held last year and it was a huge success. So we are just continuing this tournament and from the first game you can see that the quality of the game is better than last year.
Obinna Ekezie, OBN Academy founder
“This year we have the United States Consulate as our partner of the tournament. This just gives this kids the opportunity to showcase their talent, give them the opportunity to show how they’ve developed for the past year.
“The goal for us is to help this kids get scholarships to go to the United States either to high school and further their education in college. We are really excited about the opportunity we are giving to this kids, we are truly blessed.
“We have six teams participating right now and each teams probably have around 12 players so at least 48 to 50 players.
“This tournament is being viewed by high school coaches in America, college coaches in America. The goal is to give them the opportunity to be seen and hopefully they get a scholarship to further their education in high school and get a good financial backing.
Ekezie added:“For this year’s edition the skill level is much better. The longer we go the more the kids get the opportunity to train, improve better and improve their skills, the quality of the game is much better this year.
“We expect good performance from the teams, we expect them to perform well. We are expecting each player to do the best they can, play within their skills and add value to the team hopefully they can win some games
“We are just supporting them in terms of logistics. The goal for us is to make sure these kids get scholarships and that would be the prize for them.“
He went to speak on the OBN Academy summer camp.
“This is a summer period and most of the kids are out of school so we are running our summer camp which started in early June and will end in early first week in September.
“We have a lot of kids that come here everyday to improve their skills and that’s the next generation of kids that will come into our programme.”
And according to Salau:“I’m here as a parent who is encouraging basketball in Nigeria. I really believe it is a way for us to encourage the collaborative and critical thinking of our students.
Adetola Salau
“This is an avenue to have our students travel and have money for scholarships and introduce to all kinds of programmes abroad. So I love programmes like this and I love to come and watch and encourage the students.
“What we have been doing is creating more relationships with private sector organisations. Last year we had basketball tournament where people like myself, political aid to the governor, we around to our grassroots communities and brought out our young ones from junior and senior secondary and had tournaments all across Lagos.
“So I’m hoping we will be having more programmes like that and encourage more organisations to come and partner.
“OBN is a fantastic programme. I have been here with them for one year and I believe in the vision and what they’ve done so far.“
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