LDP players prepare for LDP weekend.
This past weekend, on Saturday April 14, 2012, PPI-SA held its first round of official home and away games for its 2012 Leadership Development Program. Umlazi had home court and hosted Molweni at Sapphinda Primary School. In the other girls and boys games, Lamontville hosted Umbumbulu at Bhekaphambile Primary School. Being the first LDP games since our season opening LDP tournament, all participants were eager to play some basketball!
However, two of our teams were able to get some game action in before Saturday. PPI-SA LDP Boys teams from Lamontville and Molweni represented PPI-SA in the Durban High School Easter Tournament, where high school teams throughout Southern Africa competed for the title. It was a great experience for 2 LDP teams to compete, and we applaud the effort of PPI-SA coaches for getting their teams into the tournament, as funds and transport are a consistent challenge that our areas face. The teams were able to play 4 games against a variety of opponents. It is an achievement in itself to have PPI-SA, and its respective communities, represented in these larger national tournaments!
In LDP, more emphasis is put on community outreach projects and fundraising in order to build leadership skills and create more awareness of PPI-SA in the local communities.
Week 1 of the LDP Home and Away games consisted of a life skills portion and basketball games. The Life Skills was an information session focused on project management and planning.The players were given basic project management skills and important steps for planning successful community outreach events, which will count toward their team’s point totals at the end of the semester. It is the hope of PPI-SA that these kinds of projects will hone vital skills and our participants will be able to use these experiences in LDP to help them in the “real world”.
Area Coordinator Sifiso helped execute the LDP weekend hosted in Lamontville
In addition, for the first time in both girls and boys games, a pilot was done to take individual statistics for field goals, free throws, rebounds, assists, turnovers, blocks, and steals.Individual statistics are an underdeveloped function of basketball here in SA. Individual and team statistics reveal an incredible amount about the game and the players themselves. Statistics will be given to each LDP coach to relay to their team. The statistics will help show where the teams need improvement, and help our LDP program grow as a whole. The pilot was a first step and served as a baseline, in which we will continue to improve our methods to make statistics more relevant in the LDP program.
We thank everyone involved in this weekend’s activities and look forward to the second round of games for LDP in the coming weeks.
