Yaw Sakyi: The unsung hero in sports organization

The rise of basketball through the sport’s most marketable and richest NBA it the biggest phenomenon of the early 2000s and late 1990s thanks to the rise of great players who broke through the American Sports League barrier.

Wildly popular sports leagues like the National Football League (NFL) and National Hockey League (NHL) in the Americas had a hard time permeating the social conversation and psyche of any age group outside the Americas in the pre-social media boom.

However, the charismatic appeal and ultra talent of Michael Jordan, the late Kobe Bryant, Allen Iverson, Shaquille O’Neal, Tracy McGrady and a bevvy of others made basketball the world’s favourite sport and second in popularity behind football. As a child of the world, the changing dynamics reflected in the rise in basketball popularity in Ghana’s youth to the extent of overthrowing football as the number one sport at the Senior High School level in a football-mad country.

It is at this point, that a young dynamic media personality and fledgling entrepreneur called Yaw Sakyi Afari noted the potential to grow the sport by making it even more popular by extending the sport’s reach to locations outside basketball hotbeds. The solution was to create a platform via his company RITE Sports Limited for student-athletes to compete in basketball mirroring the INTERCO system specifically made for track and field athletes in Ghana.

That platform was firstly through the CHOICE FM BASKETBALL COMPETITION which he spearheaded while working with the Accra-based radio station between 2002 and 2006. After leaving the station later 2006, he partnered with beverage giant Coca-Cola Company (their brand Sprite) to create the biggest annual High School game called SPRITE BALL CHAMPIONSHIP.

By introducing a competition system that had school basketball teams play regional qualifiers to earn spots at the national event, athletes' training habits changed from erratic to focused and players were recruited to schools via scholarships to boost respective basketball programs. That aside, resources were devoted to building proper basketball infrastructure, and basketball coaches were hired to train teams just as basketball referees and other stakeholders connected to the sport witnessed an exponential rise in demand for their services.

Most importantly it provided an upswell in the talent pool for Ghana and the need to continue fine-tuning these eager young talents beyond the High School level led to the creation of the Universities, Polytechnics and Colleges (UPAC) Basketball Championship. Though the tertiary sects in Ghana have respective sports competitions that include basketball students competed in prior to 2011, there wasn’t a common platform to test skills intersect and such competitions like the Ghana University Sports Association (GUSA) Games were held biannually and didn’t provide enough competitions to help athletes grow their skill.

To complete the process along the educational line and introduce basketball to athletes in their formative years, a competition dubbed MILO JUNIOR BALL was created for basketball players at the Junior High School level between 2010 and 2013, RITE Sports has worked with stakeholders to build a basketball ecosystem at the amateur level through Ghana’s educational system.

Special mention to Peter Kpodugbe and David Addo-Ashong, both former Presidents of the Ghana Basketball Association, the Ghana Education Service, the leadership of GUSA, GHAPSA and PUSAG and the late Chairman of the Greater Accra Basketball Association Benjamin Baifi who have played significant roles in the development of the game.

To reward the gallant men and women for their sacrifices to the teams and institutions, RITE Sports created the Ghana Basketball Awards to honour such outstanding personalities and institutions. The Awards were organized in 2013, 2015 and 2016 and household names Baniba Dodzie, Abdul Mutaleeb Alhassan and Suleman Abubakar, all of Braves of Customs, won the Men’s Basketball Player Awards respectively. In the female category, Yayra Kluiboto and Matilda Gordon won the Award.

True to its name, RITE Sports have dabbled in different sports disciplines after having a string of successes in basketball. Due to the immense popularity of football in Ghana, the UPAC franchise was expanded to include football with an eye to include tennis too. As such, in 2017, the Tertiary Football League was launched with institutions drafted from the Private Universities, Public Universities and Technical Universities/ Polytechnics Sects to compete.

12 teams representing 12 tertiary institutions were selected to compete in the tournament with six in the northern sector and six competing in the southern sector. Games in the Northern Sector were played at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) while the University of Ghana (UG) Legon campus hosted Southern Sector games. The league recorded some modest success with scouts from a few Ghanaian premier league teams spending time at the games every Saturday to recruit talents. The league halted for 2yrs and was due to resume in 2020 but COVID-19 disrupted plans.

Yaw Sakyi Afari has been the secret behind the many projects world boxing legend Azumah Nelson has been engaged in. From the launch of two (2) books, “12 Rounds of Boxing and Life” and biography “The Professor- The Life of Azumah Nelson” as well as the organization of professional boxing events dubbed Azumah Nelson Fight Nights. By teaming up with The Professor, in a Manager’s role, concerted efforts were made to get the reserved World Boxing Hall of Fame inductee’s post-boxing career on track.

It is common these days to walk or drive past a billboard of Azumah Nelson advertising a product from one of the many brands he associates with be it GOIL or De-Luxy Paint; the same thing pans on television channels and Africa’s first-ever Boxing Hall of Famer could be regularly seen engaging corporate institutions sharing his life events and lessons at such functions.

It behooves the government to form partnerships with accomplished individuals like Azumah Nelson to serve as the beacon for marginalized sports disciplines in Ghana such as boxing to start a renaissance in those areas to create more avenues for individuals to excel. A mentorship, coaching and consulting role for Ghana’s Amateur Boxers prepping for international competitions such as the Olympics and African Games by turning the Azumah Nelson Fight Night to a state-sponsored amateur boxing league could be a start.

Through football, basketball and boxing, one common denominator runs through and that’s Yaw Sakyi Afari whose dynamic, visionary and contemporary management traits have made a great vessel for taking Ghanaian sports to greatness. As governments over the period speak of bringing back school sports, one will wonder why governments won’t tap into great minds like him to lead the revitalization of school sports seeing his enviable track record. A case of what Jesus said in Mark 6:4 “A prophet is honoured everywhere except in his own hometown and among his relatives and his own family.”