A decade's hoop dreams for Chinese largest teenager basketball alliance
- By Sportswriter Yao Youming
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E-mail Xinhua, February 18, 2018
There is no better way to start the second decade of China's largest alliance of teenager basketball players than leading the young basketballers into the Shaanxi Province's Children Spring Festival Gala.
"It's never an easy decade for us," said Wang Libin, honorary president of the Chinese center and west teenagers basketball association (CCWBA), after attending the Gala on Thursday.
"Those who share the same dream have been gathered here by the CCWBA," Wang said. He is also the deputy chairman of the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA).
Different from professional games, the championship for basketballers in CCWBA adopt a new competition system. Each game has five periods, and each team is required to field a totally different squad in the first and third quarters from the one in the second and fourth quarters. The best five could only be on the ground in the last quarter.
"We came up with these special rules in order to give more chances to more young players," Wang said.
Led by the 54-year-old man, a group of children also performed stunning basketball skills on the gala stage.
It was in Tongchuan city, Shaanxi Province where Wang Yinghu built Miaomiao girls' basketball team in 1988. "Miaomiao" means seedlings in Chinese.
After snatching some good places in some national competitions for the juniors, the Miaomiao team was hailed one of the city icons.
To help more young enthusiasts around the country to play more with each other, Wang Yinghu invited Wei Dianchen, a coach from Hebei Province, to organize a tournament.
"The first championship was held in 2007. It also marked the establishment of the CCWBA," Wei recalled.
Starting with just eight teams, the CCWBA tournament today boasts 187 teams from more than 20 provinces, municipalities and regions nationwide.
Even Liu Yongping, the abecedarian of NBA player Zhou Qi, began to lead Zhou's younger fellow trainees to attend the tournament in 2013.
Parents of teenage trainees have also joined the "big family", working as volunteers in various competitions of CCWBA.
"The sport can keep teenagers away from bad addictions, such as drugs, online video games and so on. What's more, my son and I spend more time together," said Wang Xiaohong, the mother of a CCWBA player. She has been a volunteer in CCWBA since 2015.
Apart from holding competitions, the CCWBA has also helped enhance communication between its member schools all around China.
When the CCWBA held a competition in a vocational education center in Xinxiang City, Henan Province, in 2016, students from east China's Shandong Province also came to watch, and took this opportunity to research the local vocational education situation.
"Some elite schools have became our members recently. They can better cooperate on not only sports education but also other areas," Yinghu said.
More than 3,000 players have played the CCWBA competitions in the past decade.
Wang Yinghu plans to hold a Miaomiao elite tournament in this summer, inviting former Miaomiao players to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the establishment of the team.
"I hope young basketballers play better and make greater contribution to China's basketball development in the next decade," Wang Libin said.
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