“A child in sport is a child out of court,” these are the words of Hoops4Hope programme coordinator Thabo Marotola who trains young children from Nyanga and surrounding communities vital sporting skills.
Hoops4Hope is a non governmental organisation (NGO) that uses sport and life skills as a vehicle to educate young people about social ills.
Marotola said they aim to remove young people from the streets.
“We are living in difficult times and anything can happen anytime. So, by having such programmes we are trying to groom them to be better people. Not everyone is good at academics. Others are good in sports,” explained Marotola.
Explaining why he chose basketball out of all other sports codes, he said he wanted something fascinating and unique.
“When I started this organisation more than two decades ago there was no basketball in our areas.
“But now I’m working with local primary schools which include Mzamomhle (Philippi), Masiphumelele (Khayelitsha), John Pama (Nyanga), Lwazi (Gugulethu) . Each school has two teams for both genders. We have school coaches that are assisting in training our children which we call the Most Valuable Person (MVP),” he said, adding that each school trains twice a week.
Marotola said most of the time at training is teaching them dribbling, handling and passing the ball. He described the sport as instilling discipline in a child.
“Each school has two coaches who train them. The coaches are people from the same vicinity of the school. We (coaches) train them for the job. Each school trains twice a week,” he said, adding that the age group for children is between 10 and 14 years old.
Marotola said they have an outreach programme at Philippi Village where they train people basics of basketball.
He said it is open for everyone every Tuesday and Friday after school. One of the children who are part of the programme Azole Rayi (12) from Nyanga described the organisation as a safe space for them. He said he has three years in the organisation.
“Hoops4Hope always keeps us busy all the time. After school we are going to training and they also taught us about respect,” said Rayi.