Basketball in Schools (Xghajra Primary) TV 3-pointer feature May 2016

The Malta Basketball Association is always increasing its efforts to create more basketball awareness.

In fact, the MBA runs its promotional effort on two separate, although identical in certain aspects, fronts.

On one end, there is the Basketball in Schools programme which was launched in January 2015 and endorsed by the Ministry of Education, the Parliamentary Secretariat for Youth and Sport as well as the Department of Education.

This programme is, in essence, aimed to create basketball awareness amongst schoolchildren as well as aid the national effort to have more physical activity during regular school hours.In fact, the sessions are essentially basic basketball awareness sessions to introduce the game of basketball to the young kids but at the same time also introducing generic physical exercise through core fundamentals and basic body co-ordination activities.

The programme, under the direction of Bernard Vassallo and assisted by Silvio Cassar on certain days, consists of a five (5) to eight (8) session programme in each respective school spread over a short span of weeks (we are recommending once a week) with each session fitting in the normal school day’s timetable so as not to disrupt unnecessarily the academic subjects and thereby making it easier for heads of schools to accept to include the programme in their school’s activities.

On the other part, the MBA has also, for a number of years, another concurrent project but working upon a distinct, yet somewhat similar from a technical view point, concept.

This is the basketball promotion effort whereby a school may opt to have the participating year groups visit the national basketball complex, run by the Malta Basketball Association, and have the basketball sessions within the same complex.

These sessions are coordinated by Mr Leonard Falzon who also makes use of all the equipment already within the same complex. In the sessions, which transform the National Basketball Complex into a hive of activity several times each week, the schoolchildren learn the basic fundamentals of the game and savour the experience of playing on official playing courts.

All in all, the MBA’s total schoolkids programme is really primarily aimed to create basketball awareness amongst schoolchildren but is also envisaged to be an aid (both from the education and sport central administration’s perspectives) to the much needed, national effort to have more quality, physical activity during regular school hours for our children.

Click here to see the 3-pointer TV feature shot at the Xghajra Primary School in May 2016