After all the years, it should be possible to consider some serious and sinister aspects of what happened to destroy a promising private sector and community initiative in sports industry – semi-pro basketball. The evidence is very powerful that the public sector, which is to say, successive PUP and UDP governments, did not do their part in the nurturing of the industry.
When semi-pro basketball began in Belize in early 1992, the league featured six franchises which were all Belize City-based. This meant that, unlike the case in semi-pro football, which had been inaugurated the previous year, there were no transportation costs.
The one negative at foundation was the fact that the semi-pro league, headed by Commissioner Gus Perera, had to agree to opening games on the semi-pro tickets being played by an amateur senior league headed by Marion Usher. This was because the amateur basketball association had “rights” to the use of the Belize City Center, better known as “Civic,” a Southside facility owned by the Government of Belize, which was PUP in 1992.
The semi-pro basketball league took off very quickly, sparked by a sensational franchise with seven rookies owned by the poorest of the owners – Kremandala. Kremandala was able to compete with the millionaire franchises because it was surrounded by young basketball talent in the Lake Independence/Collet area, and because Kremandala owned a newspaper and a radio station to do promotion for its home games.
The old Civic, which was open on the sides for fresh-air ventilation, soon proved too small for the semi-pro basketball crowds. Civic capacity peaked between 1700 and 1800: it wasn’t big enough in 1992.
As if the hype involving Maurice Williams and the Raiders, A.C. Augustine and Crown Stadium, and Pinas Staine’s Penta Lakers was not massive enough, the semi-pro basketball league attracted even more attention in the season’s second half when the Kremandala Raiders management voted to allow Fred Garcia, Jr. and Kirk Smith to compete in the tournament. Garcia and Smith had finished their school years at Navarro State, a junior college in Texas, and their return would mean that Penta Lakers would become the most powerful team in the tournament. Raiders voted for Garcia and Smith, however, because Kremandala was thinking of the business future of the Belize basketball product.
By the time of the 1992 semi-pro basketball playoffs, basketball fans and scouts were pouring across the border from southern Mexico to see the games. Fred Garcia and Kirk Smith contributed mightily to the hysteria, and their Penta Lakers went on to win the first semi-pro championship, though pushed to the limit by the upstart Raiders.
Following the 1992 season, the PUP government gave a contract to David Courtenay for the refurbishing of the Civic. Courtenay enlarged the auditorium to 6,000 capacity, but he created an oven. There was no ventilation or cooling. By 1997 the facility had absolutely ruined attendance. The semi-pro league folded.
The new UDP government which took office in June of 1993, did nothing to address the damage to the Civic. To make matters worse, they had personal and political problems with the Kremandala ownership, and began an anti-Raiders campaign in their party newspaper, Pulse, which lasted for most of 1994 and 1995.
Another problem was the radio rivalry which saw sports and news announcers from, first Friends FM (Radio Belize) and then LOVE, target the Raiders and semi-pro basketball for attack because they saw Raider success as strengthening KREM Radio. These announcers were being encouraged in this by the Bowen and Bowen beer and soft drink giant. The Bowen group had personal and business issues with Kremandala because of the Kremandala boycott against them which had almost directly led to the founding of the semi-pro football league in 1991.
It was almost impossible for the basketball franchise owners to consult with each other during the season because the sport had become so competitive so quickly that owners and their managers were leery of each other. Thus it was that when a new semi-pro Commissioner, Daniel Fabro, proposed that the games be televised for free on Stewart Krohn’s television station, there was division amongst the franchise owners. (NOTE: In 1994, Lord Michael Ashcroft was a major shareholder in Krohn’s Channel 5. Lord Ashcroft now owns the station.) This was before the start of the 1994 season. The owners, apart from Kremandala, had experienced declining attendance because of the Civic “refurbishment.” Television made no sense if the franchises were not being paid by the station. Television would have definitely damaged gates in the short term. Thus, at the beginning of its third year, semi-pro basketball owners were divided by a strange proposition. This came on the heels of the Civic disaster at the beginning of the second season.
When the semi-pro league collapsed after the 1997 season, the UDP government which, as we have pointed out, was openly hostile to Kremandala and, by extension, semi-pro basketball, went all out to win the CARICOM basketball tournament scheduled to be hosted by Belize in 1998. The semi-pro league had limited “foreign” players to two, in order to control payroll budgets, but in 1998 the UDP built the national basketball selection around Belizeans living in the United States. The government bought a new imported court. The UDP hired an American coach for $50,000 just for the tournament. What this meant was that when there was a PUP attempt to revive semi-pro basketball in 1999, the non-resident players who had led Belize’s great CARICOM victory could not be excluded, and team budgets began to soar out of control. Nobody wanted to lose, and it cost too much to win.
The upshot of all this is that the Civic has finally been condemned by engineers, but after 18 years there is still no replacement facility. Basketball remains the most popular sport in the nation’s largest population center in an era of explosive media growth, the city entertainment vacuum is wide open, the talent is around for the taking, but Belizean youth are shooting bullets instead of hoops. If you dig deep enough, you will find that it is PUDP politicians who are to blame.
Power to the people. Power in the struggle.