Basketball: AIS, ISL Win 2012 Ivy League

American International School, AIS, and International School, Akoka, Lagos, ISL, are the new champions of this year’s AKOFA Ivy Basketball League.

The AKOFA Ivy league is an annual basketball tourney for boys and girls in private secondary schools across Lagos. It began about a decade ago with less than 10 schools.

In the boy’s final match that was played recently at the Rowe Park basketball court, Yaba, Lagos, ISL defeated their opponents from Airforce Secondary School by 46- 18 points, while in the girl’s category, American International School out-dunked the girls from International School Lagos by 29-27 points.

Speaking during the medals presentation ceremony after the matches, the CEO of AKOFA Sports, John Bimbo Faniran, who is the co-coordinator of the tourney, described this year’s tourney as an huge improvement over past editions of the league.

He added that their target is to see some of the players that featured in the tourney playing for the country in the future.

“We’re very impressed with the standard of play of most of the teams that participated in this tourney and, more importantly, the impressive results recorded by all the teams through out the competition.

“And we believe in short time, these boys and girls would have developed their skills and start competing for places in our national teams. We (parents present) just have to encourage them,” Faniran said.

Some of the awards given at the ceremony included, Best Coach of the Year in the female category to Donald Blondin of AIS, Best Coach of the Year in the male category to Ade Oyewole of ISL and Overall Champion Senior in the female and male categories were also given to ISL.

—Bamidele Olowosagba