Cape Town – After finishing third in Egypt, a Cape Town basketball team has qualified for the Basketball Africa League (BAL) in Kigali, Rwanda, next month.
The Cape Town Tigers returned home from the Nile Conference on Thursday and received a warm welcome from supporters at the Cape Town International Airport.
The team won two games against South Sudan and Cameroon and lost three, finishing third in the competition.
The Cape Town Tigers were only established in 2019, but they are already the South African and Southern African Regional Club basketball champions.
Team owner and coach Raphael Alexander Edwards thanked supporters for their support throughout the BAL and for the heroes’ welcome.
“We will work on further strengthening team unity, paying attention to details with regards to the Tigers style of play and staying mentally locked in until the final buzzer as part of the preparation for the play-offs in Rwanda,” Edwards said.
The Tigers, who train at UCT and in Khayelitsha, will be facing Tunisian side US Monistar in the quarter-finals.
The team are appealing to the City of Cape Town to heed their call to meet and discuss the state of and accessibility to basketball facilities across Cape Town.
“The hope is that this will see a commitment from the City of Cape Town to address the quality and accessibility of such facilities for the team and the broader basketball community in Cape Town.
“The Cape Town Tigers also call on businesses in South Africa to come on board and sponsor the club to enable them to grow the team and build its development programmes and teams,” the team said.
IOL