The OBN Summer Basketball Camp Fiesta 2023 will take place in multiple camp locations in Lagos.
This was disclosed by founder of the OBN Academy and former NBA star Obinna Ekezie.
In an exclusive chat with Completesports.com at the Palm Shopping Mall where awareness for camp was held on Saturday, July 15, 2023, Ekezie said the idea is to make it easier for kids to attend the camps closer to them.
He said due to the fuel issue in the country, coming to the OBN Academy at Ajah wouldn’t be easy for most of the kids hence the idea of the multiple camps.
The OBN Summer Basketball Camp Fiesta 2023 hold from July 15 to September 2.
Among the camps that will host this year’s edition are OBN Academy, Ogombo road, Ajah, Meadow Hall School, Lekki Phase 1, Lagos Preparatory Secondary School Ikoyi and Greensprings School Ilupeju, Ikeja.
On the awareness drive at the Palm Shopping Mall where kids from the OBN Academy were on hand to showcase their skills in five on five games, slam dunks and three points throws, Ekezie explained:“We are at the Palm Shopping Mall and the goal here is to showcase the talents we have. We are two years old and we have developed some really good players and to bring out people to come out and watch what we are doing, to appreciate the level of talent that we have is what we are trying to do here.
“The goal is to get parents to try to understand the impact or the benefit of bringing their children and developing them in sport especially basketball and that has a huge impact on the education of the child. Through our OBN educational services we’ve been able to negotiate scholarship opportunities for our student athletes. So we have a couple of schools in the US that are offering scholarship to our kids which is a huge benefit for any patents who aspire for their kids to go abroad.
“Through our educational services we are working to get more and more of this relationships at the high school level and college level in America so that our children that come to our programme would have benefit to enjoy this scholarship which will be benefit the patents who are the ones to pay for their schooling.
“The days where you ignore sports especially what we are doing through OBN is over. You have to understand that in the American system the sport is part of their educational system. And sport programmed in America offer scholarships for all their sporting programmes. Whether it’s American football, basketball, baseball, tennis, golf, they offer scholarships for those people that have the skills and talent to showcase and play at the high level.
“So that’s what we want to develop here so that we can develop these kids especially the talented ones so as to give them the opportunity.
He added: “We set up this place (exhibition at the Palm Shopping Mall) so that people at the shopping mall can come and witness it and see the kind of talents that we have here. It’s about creating awareness and we are having our camp at OBN for those at Lekki, Chevron areas, those at that proximity can come to the OBN academy.”
On how the journey has been as the founder of OBN Academy, he said:“The journey has been awesome and I judge it by the level of talents we have developed and producing. And you can see from the exhibition that these kids are exceptionally good, they have developed their talent and skills and they are getting stronger and I’m very encouraged so we want to continue to do this and create the awareness so that as more and more people see this they will want their children to be part of this.”
