What we practice for is life, but also to play against other teams. League games and tournaments mostly take place in the capital Accra. It is a chance for our players to go to the big city and meet other youngsters, test their skills and compete. We currently participate in the following leagues:

• Accra Youth League (U13, U16)
• Junior Accra Basketball League (U13, U15)
• Mini Basketball Meetings (U10)
• Clutch League (U18)

On sundays we rest our bodies, but we still meet and the players have a coach-guided peer-to-peer-talk. They can discuss what goes on at school, at home, what issues they might face in life and they can come up with advice and solutions for each other. Thus we strengthen our community and grow individually, even if we don’t have a ball in hand.

Every now and then we have some special occasions, like holidays, where we celebrate together on the court and have some treats for the players like soft drinks or we might have some famous visitors like former NBA player Pops Mensah-Bonsu, who you see in the picture to talk to our players and what they can aspire to achieve.

A few times a week Andy reaches out to nearby schools to promote the game of basketball and run one of our regular school programs for young girls and boys. Sometimes some of our regular players even come along to help run the practices. Currently we are in cooperation with four schools for such programs:

• Able Academy, Tema (6-14 years old)
• Creator School Tema (6-14 years old)
• Aburi Girls Senior High School, Eastern Region (16-18 years old)
• German International School, Accra (6-9 years old)

You might have read it already in our vision: We want to build a youth center in the long run. One with a full basketball court in the center. One where the kids can always be around, play and learn. One that can also hold meetings and further education of coaches and educators. One that can even acommodate international youth exchanges in the future.

If we have a youth center yet or not, we are already plotting and planning for such exchanges with our partner Young Africa Rising. With their long experience in disaporic youth work in Germany and Ghana, they are a strong partner to do this with us. What will we see first: Basketball Unite Academy players going to Berlin or hosting in Tema?

We have hosted it once before, we want it to be a regular thing: The Basketball Unite Academy U13-3on3-Invititational Tournament. Once a year we want to bring the youth basketball world from Tema and Accra to Community 4, see the kids mesh and see who is the strongest team on the KLM Playground.