On Wednesday, 4th June, a team from the ICARRe Foundation visited the U16 Basketball team during one of their training sessions at the Lugogo Indoor Arena.

The team is currently in camp as they prepare for the FIBA U16 African Championship Zone V Qualifiers which shall be taking place in Tanzania from 12th to 14th June.

In 2023, the qualifiers took place in Rwanda, and both the boys and girls teams qualified for the continental championship, which was held in Tunisia.

In 2024, U18 teams boys and girls won the quality which were held in Uganda and qualified for the championship in South Africa.

This year, the U16 boys and girls will also be looking to play in at the continental championship and they are very eager to clear the qualifiers hurdle.

When the ICARRe team came, their emphasis was mainly on mental health and how the players should handle pressure situations.

The session was conducted by Mental Health expert and URA player, Joshua Lubwama Letti.

He spoke about the purpose of their visit,

“The purpose of our visit was to equip these youngsters with some mental health-related skills and to create awareness”

“We took them through the various techniques and coping mechanisms on how they can perform under pressure” he added.

The Sports Director of iCARRe Foundation Allen Namiya also spoke about the purpose of their visit.

“We do these visits so that we can empower the young people” she said.

She also highlighted why their focus is on the youth.

“Many organizations support the senior teams but as our culture at iCARRe, we’d like to support the youth.”

It is to be remembered that ahead of the 2024 FIBA U18 African Championship in South Africa, iCARRe donated 11 million shillings to the team.

This time around, they also donated an undisclosed amount and this will go a long way into helping the team as they prepare for the tournament.