DAKAR (Coaching/Development) - SEED Foundation (Sports for Education and Economic Development) is proud to support the first annual SEED Academy Hoop Forum presented by Nike. The Hoop Forum will run from Monday, May 15th to Saturday, May 20th and consist of four separate events.
The Forum will kick-off with an Interscholastic tournament featuring the top eight high school teams from Senegal. All games will be played at the Cheikh Anta Diop University campus in Dakar with the quarterfinals taking place the weekend of May 6th. The semifinals will be played on Monday, May 15th starting at 6:00 pm and the finals will take place at 7:00 pm on Tuesday, May 16th.
In addition to the tournament, the Hoop Forum will also include the Nike Elite Skills Academy.
The Skills Academy will be held on Wednesday, May 17th, Thursday, May 18th and Friday, May 19th. A total of 50 players age 19 and under from countries such as Senegal, Nigeria, Mali, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso and Mauritania will make up the event. Players will have a chance to develop their skills during morning stations and structured scrimmages in the afternoon. In addition to the basketball, players will also attend life skills seminars, team-building sessions and lectures.
A youth clinic will be the third part of the event week and will take place on Wednesday, May 17th.
The week's events will conclude with a coach's clinic on Saturday, May 20th. The clinic will feature an array of influential basketball figures from the NBA and WNBA.
The list includes Cynthia Cooper, retired WNBA player and current Prairie View A&M University head women's coach, Joe Toumou, Player Development, Coach Billy Bayno, Portland Trailblazers, Masai Ujiri, Denver Nuggets, Lance Blanks, Cleveland Cavaliers, Will Voight, Coach in Norway, Sam Ahmedu, Memphis Grizzlies, Godwin Owinje, Radarhoops International, Lissandro Miranda, Dallas Mavericks, Myke Scholl, General Manager of South Africa's men's national team, and Lucky Kekena, Johannesburg, South Africa.
"It is an exciting time for the SEED Foundation," said SEED Executive Director Amadou Gallo Fall.
"We have some tremendous athletes participating in our event and we hope that this experience will reach them beyond the game of basketball. We are hoping to share the vision of the SEED Foundation with each of these young men and drive home the importance of education."
Learn more about the SEED Academy at
http://www.seedproject.org/ or
http://www.seed-academy.org/.