RI to start student basketball league

RI to start student basketball league

JAKARTA (JP): Two years after launching a professional league, the Indonesian Basketball Association now plans to set up a regular competition for students.

Ary Sudarsono of the association said yesterday that the competition, a carbon copy of NCAA in the U.S., will kick off after the general election next year.

The student tournament will be split into three groups: elementary school, junior high school and senior high school. Each age group will have five regional divisions.

Ary said that 10 million students from 27 provinces in the country are expected to take part in the competition, in which all games will be played on weekends.

"Our motto is 'school is number one and basketball is my game'," Ary said.

In an apparent attempt to support the plan, Ary invited two student players who stated that they never miss school although they are active in the sport.

Ario, a student of Yapenka junior high school in Cipete, South Jakarta, was ranked seventh in his class while Dede, a sixth grade student of Yapenka elementary school, is ranked two.

"As a consequence of the student league, school teams will now replace amateur clubs," Ary said.

Ary said that the national basketball body will discuss the proposal with the Ministry of Education and Culture, the State Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports Office and the National Sports Council.

Ary will start working on his plan with a series of basketball clinics and parades in eight cities across the country, where he is scheduled to provide short-term training courses for teachers and students and to give basic training to elementary school students.

The program, sponsored by Energo milk, will be kicked off in Bogor, West Java on April 6 and 7. Then it moves to Central Java's Semarang and Surakarta, Yogyakarta, East Java's Surabaya, West Java's Bandung, Ujungpandang in South Sulawesi and Medan, North Sumatra. (05)