It will be another busy, but exciting summer for Nipissing Lakers men’s basketball team head coach Chris Cheng.
Once again, Cheng will represent Canada and wear the red and white as he joins the Junior National Team as an assistant coach for the FIBA U18 Americas Championship 2018 in St. Catharines.
The event runs from June 10th to 16th.
Cheng is excited about the opportunity to be a part of the event and experience he will gain with the national program.
“It is always an honour to represent your country. I am most grateful and humbled for the opportunity to work with our National Team athletes and coaches,” he said.
“This is a tremendous opportunity. I look forward to the training and competition ahead.”
For The Lakers skipper, this will be year 14 with Team Canada. Canada is moving up the world rankings in junior basketball after the U19 team captured Gold in the World Cup last summer.
Cheng has seen Canada grow from pretenders to world class contenders in that 14 years with the national program.
“I remember over a decade ago, we had a model on how we want to develop our players but also our coaches, administrators and officials,” said Cheng.
“That stems from the grassroots level, the commitment of the coaches developing programs. You look across the country now, there’s an opportunity for kids to play basketball all year round at every level and there is a level for every single person where their skill set is. The coaches are more devoted to developing the fundamental skills, the kids are more devoted to learning fundamental skills and it is just catching up and we are shrinking the gap against the best around the world and that is really the difference.”
With that recent success, Cheng says gold is what they are after.
Canada is in Group B along with Chile, Ecuador and Argentina. All three countries qualified by winning medals at the South American U17 Championship for Men 2017.
Canada will open the tournament with a "Family Day" game against Argentina on Sunday, June 10 at 2:15 p.m. ET.
All 24 games will be played at the Meridian Centre in downtown St. Catharines.
