From good facilities to excellent organizations, the basketball development in the islands is on the right track towards producing players competitive enough to face among others, the teams from neighboring Guam.
Burns who has met with different sports organizations, concerned government agencies and schools on the islands said in an interview last Tuesday that the CNMI’s sports community is doing a very good job in getting young people into sports.
He said it’s great that NMI has the Department of Community and Cultural Affairs to take good care of the youth programs and other sports and recreational activities.
He said he is particularly impressed by how many group of women deeply involved in basketball. Having seen the female teams, particularly the national women’s team, Burns has his thumbs up for them.
The way the competitions are run is well organized.
Aside from the group of sports organizers, NMI he also said, has a strong group of referees, that serve as main source of basic knowledge in basketball.
During the first week of his visit, he has seen quite enough to make his assessment of how basketball development is doing not only on Saipan, but also on Tinian and Rota.
Even Tinian, he said has good basketball and other sports facilities. The people there, he also noted as the amount of enthusiasm needed to make the sports keep going.
Burns added that there are rooms for improvements. That is why he plans to gather all coaches.
What he would like to see, Burns said is a “less-structured” way of bringing coaches together and aimed at developing coaching skills while enjoying every activity.
Burns said he believes that the major learning is when coaches learn from other coaches. So the training program he has in mind is the one that can be described to be “socially” set learning environment for the coaches.
The coaches themselves should work together to form training session designs that are as appropriate as possible.
With that, he would be able to see the coaches’ individual fundamental skills.
