“No CBC Championships in 2020” – Patrick Haynes

May 17, 2020 Sports

By Calvin Chapman

The Honourary Secretary of the Guyana Amateur Basketball Federation (GABF); Patrick Haynes who is also a member of the International Basketball Federation (FIBA)3×3 council, during an interview with Kaieteur Sport yesterday, has declared that the 2020 Caribbean Basketball Confederation (CBC) championships is off the books following the release of FIBA’s revised 2020-21 calendar earlier in the week.

There will be no CBC championships in 2020.

Guyana senior men’s team before playing their historic CBC C/ship final against Antigua & Barbuda in Suriname, 2018.

The Guyana’s senior national men’s basketball team that won their first CBC championship in June 2018 in Paramaribo, Suriname, was set to defend their title this year with a promising side, which had whitewashed a visiting Grenada national team at home last December.
Following the early stages of the coronavirus outbreak in the region, Jamaica had come forward as a potential host for the regional basketball showpiece but any hope of competitive basketball in the Caribbean for 2020 has been quashed.
However, in 2021, Guyana will play in the FIBA Americup 2023 qualifying tournament although no CBC tournament (which serves as the qualifying event for the FIBA Americup qualfiers) will be competed in 2020. FIBA will use the current rankings to decide the CBC representatives which puts current champions Guyana along with Antigua and Barbuda (2018 runners-up) into the Americup qualifiers.
The men from the land of many waters finished third during their first and last Americup qualifiers in February 2019 in Colombia, a performance that their coach Junior Hercules had noted his players should be proud of after citing the different challenges.
Going forward, the history making coach explained that, the safety of players and everyone involved in tournaments should be first priority. He further noted that the sport may never be the same following COVID-19 but it is important that we keep moving forward and approach our reality with a bit of optimism.
Haynes also shared that the Centro-basket youth tournaments will also see regional teams involved in competitive basketball in 2021. But, Guyana’s under-17 boys’ eighth place showing in the previous tourney in 2017 that bounced off in the Dominican Republic, has given the Golden Arrowhead no chance of being represented in the 2021 event since the CBC representatives will be selected by FIBA based on current rankings.

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