And during the Ahmadiyya press conference, they also gave an update on this year's basketball tournament, which will feature 52 teams - a huge jump from when they started 8 years ago with only 8 teams. And this year, they will also be offering insurance to the players in case they sustain any injuries during the tournament. The commissioner of the basketball league told us more today.
Rodvern Lino, Commissioner, Ahmadiyya Basketball league
"We'restarting this Sunday, the 22nd of January, we'll be at the SJC gym at 9am and we're running something like 18 games every Sunday. The categories we have this year, we have five categories, U12, U15, U18, U22 and open. I'm very excited about the U12, it's an addition this year, it's not a new addition, we've had it before but this year we decided to have it again because it's very important that we begin to train our athletes at a very young age and we have noticed that in the past we would see the young people transition from the younger age categories to the older age categories and transition into the elite league so we want to begin to foster the talent from as early as possible. We will be running 12 weeks. That will also include an Allstar break where we will be having three point, slam down and skills competition and we'll be widening off with our championship weekend. The new addition to this year we will be having is we would notice that in the past we would have athletes who would be injured during the season so what we have done as a league was decided to speak to one of the insurance companies who would be providing a subsidized rate for the athletes whosoever would like to sign up for it so that they could be protected during the season and throughout the remainder of the year."
