For all the Yuletide cheer, at least one body is happy not to be seeing red.
Less than 12 months into his regime, first-year president Derrick Garrett is reporting the $40 000 debt that hamstrung the Barbados Amateur Basketball Association (BABA) for the past year is all but gone, following what he deems to be more prudent management.
In a NATION SPORT exclusive, Garrett revealed his executive has cleared over 90 per cent of the deficit despite operating four leagues with very little sponsorship.
“To me it was just a case of prudent management, though we did work very hard to handle our finances considering these economic times,” said Garrett in a telephone interview.
“The year was challenging, to say the least, but we’re very close to breaking even be for the year and that’s a far cry from where we were last year.
“We were $40 000 in the red and that consisted primarily of rental fees for the YMCA and [Barbados] Community College (BCC), an outstanding debt to Station Hill [Cavaliers] and last year’s failed raffle.”
At one point last year, the BABA had owed the BCC $20 000 in rental fees alone, forcing the local body to relocate Premier League basketball to the Wildey Gym for the majority of the last two seasons.
This was before Garrett’s executive found out it was on the hook for $10 000 in January after the previous council was forced to abandon a $480 000 raffle for a fully furnished house and car at The Villages, Coverley.
But they proved to be the least of Garrett’s issues in a challenging first term at the helm that included the highly publicised Ricardo Yearwood dropkick incident and the University of the West Indies fan brawl.
Both events inevitably cast a bad light on the local sport and probably played a role in influencing the BABA’s decision to issue Yearwood a life ban for his jump kick – the video of which went viral on Facebook and Youtube.
“In a sense, it made the situation a lot better in terms of the perception of the sport because at least the public could see that we weren’t paying lip service to cleaning up basketball,” reasoned Garrett.
Along with finally clearing the debt, Garrett said his executive also had plans to restructure the format of its four leagues by pushing for an early February start to the 2012 season.
“We made a few mistakes by playing the other divisions long before the Premier League because by starting the Premier League so late we didn’t have an income flow early until our money maker started,” he explained.
