GABA left to clean up Sonics’ mess

Oct 18, 2013 Sports

By Edison Jefford
Like a responsible big brother, the Georgetown Amateur Basketball Association (GABA) was busy yesterday cleaning up Pepsi Sonics’ mess, which was accrued from a mix-up over a local tour, featuring one of Suriname’s top clubs, Yellow Birds.
Pepsi Sonics had invited the club and a female team for the second leg of an exchange visit this weekend after they had visited Suriname a while ago. However, Sonics wrote the club earlier this week cancelling the tour and leaving GABA in the mêlée.
The initiative was to have been a joint one between the Georgetown sub-association and Sonics, but as it turns out now, GABA will have to fully support the venture. “I want everybody to know that they messed up,” GABA President, Michael Singh said yesterday.
“I had told (Brian) Carter to cancel the trip, but I just spoke to the young woman who’s in charge in Suriname and she was almost in tears. She is saying that a lot of them got leave from work and have already rented a bus and paid for food,” Singh continued.
Based on those preparations to travel to Guyana from the Surinamese, Singh indicated that he told the Surinamese representative to continue her efforts to bring a male and female team and he will offset certain local costs associated with their tour.
According to Singh, he will continue with the competition despite Sonics has reneged on their obligations. As a result, Sonics will still play Yellow Birds tonight at the Cliff Anderson Sports Hall while Colts will play the Suriname club at 2pm tomorrow.
He said that female games will precede both features. “They’re (Pepsi Sonics) hurting basketball, not helping it. People had to ask for leave and they (the Surinamese) even changed the date of a funeral to accommodate us,” Singh continued to lament.
When contacted, President of the Pepsi Sonics Basketball Club, Merle Jordan told Kaieteur Sport that the initiative was just at its planning stage and nothing was ever confirmed. She said that she kept Suriname informed via letters of every step in the planning process.
“They were communicating with Carter, he is not part of Pepsi Sonics. Maybe Carter never told us what was going on,” Jordan noted, alluding to miscommunication among them locally as one of the factors, which may have resulted in the mix-up.
She said that the letter that was sent cancelling the tour never received any response from Yellow Birds and the Surinamese. However, that would have been in contradiction to the information the GABA would have been receiving through the same source.
Jordan went on to say that she would not be so insensitive as to plan an International basketball event the same weekend as Hits and Jams’ R. Kelly Show. She sought to distant herself from any wrongdoing, stating that the tour was never concretised.

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GABA left to clean up Sonics’ mess

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