La Fleur plants seeds for NMI hoops to flourish

Basketball has always been a staple in CNMI’s sporting world, but it’s getting a boost in all aspects of coaching, refereeing, and gameplay from FIBA Oceania National Federation and Sport Development manager Annie La Fleur, who is here for a week planting the seeds for basketball’s continuous flourish in the CNMI.

La Fleur just wrapped up a referee workshop for Northern Marianas Basketball Federation officials last Sunday and has taught Public School System coaches during their Statewide Professional Development with a coaching workshop yesterday—all done at the Gilbert C. Ada Gymnasium.

After yesterday’s coaching session with not only basketball coaches but other school sports coaches and physical education teachers as well, La Fleur said that they went over the fundamentals, what is technique centered teaching, and game-based teaching. 

“It’s about providing an opportunity for players to be successful,” she said. But that “It’s great to teach the fundamentals but then how do you put it into the game like setting for them to be successful in a game because at the end of the day, we’re trying to prepare our players to be successful on the court,” she said.

La Fleur said that she came to assist as much as she could, but she will leave again, so “we want to provide that build capacity, but also the sustainability of programs. By working with educators in the country and upskilling them to continue to deliver, I think that is the priority for us.”

She added that with the recently concluded coach’s and referee’s workshops “the enthusiasm and the willing[ness] to learn and to try and make change—I think is really shown and it’s very valuable.”

When asked—as a coach’s coach—what her favorite thing is about it, to which she said that it was helping facilitate change. “If you’re always doing the same thing and getting the same outcomes, I think we would want to make change. And from what I’ve seen, the questions that I’ve had, it shows that they do want to adjust things slightly, make some additions, take some things away… because it’s the players that we’re trying to really help.”

With that, she said the hardest thing about it is if people don’t want to make changes. “If you don’t want to make changes, you’re always going to do the same thing,” she said. “And I think the federation has really shown that they’ve got a strategic plan in place. They’ve got some ideas and goals and what they’re trying to do is to help increase the participation in the country for basketball—but also lift the standard of their coaches, their referees and then eventually, their players.

Nick Gross, CNMI PSS Athletics Program director, said at the end of the workshop, “On behalf of the Public School System, thank you very much for taking the trip. To the federation, thank you for the continued partnership for the sport. It’s been fantastic. This is obviously the very tip of the iceberg in the sense of coaching and getting a feel for some different ideas to assist you in coaching.”

Jonathan Sugatan, Hopwood Middle School basketball coach who attended the coach’s workshop, said that it gave them a better idea how they should coach students depending on their age groups. 

“We’re the starting point for making the younger generation interested and making them want to come back and progress in whichever sport they wish to pursue,” Sugatan said.

As for James Lee, NMIBF president, he said he’s loved collaborating with PSS. “I thank Nick [Gross] for the willingness to link in with us. It’s the grassroots area for the growth of the sport and if we don’t work closely hand-in-hand with PSS, we won’t be able to accomplish our goals at the competition level,” he said. “We are grateful that the former [Education] commissioner [Alfred] Ada agreed to it and Nick worked on it, so I’m really glad to see a lot of the educators came out to be part of this.”

The coaching workshops are set to continue today and tomorrow from 5pm to 8:30pm; another referee workshop is from Friday, Sept. 8 at 5pm to 8:30pm, and Saturday, Sept. 9 from 9am to 12pm.

After the coaching workshop yesterday, La Fleur hosted a clinic with the junior national girls program from 6pm to 7:30pm; a clinic is set for U14 girls on Saturday, 1:30pm to 3pm; junior national girls program clinic is from 3:30pm to 5pm; and the women’s open clinic is from 5:30pm to 7pm.