Basketball: Stallions Sports Qatar to conduct a coaching camp in Sri Lanka

Stallions Basketball Academy, the basketball coaching arm of Stallions Sports, Qatar is all set to conduct a basketball coaching camp in Sri Lanka from February 1 to 4 at the Henry Pedris Basketball Complex in Colombo.

This project is supported by Sri Lanka Basketball Federation.  

The camp will be conducted by Coach Eric Gardow from USA and Coach Ben Smith from UK together with Stallions, Qatar coach Keshawa Perera. 

The programme consists sessions for juniors and seniors from School basketball teams, Club teams, Academy teams, Corporate teams etc. 

Sessions have also been allocated to Sri Lanka Defense Service teams and a special training session will be conducted to groom the Sri Lankan basketball coaches.

Coach Eric Gardow is a FIBA and USA basketball qualified coach who has over 25 years of coaching experience. 

His illustrious coaching career includes tenures as the Head Coach of Qatar National Men’s Basketball Team, Coach NCAA (USA), Coach BJL and NBL Japan etc. 

Coach Eric holds BSc in Special Education and MSc in Education from US and coached players and coaches from the grass root levels to High Performance national levels. 

Coach Ben Smith is a qualified basketball coach from UK who has over 12 years of coaching experience and Coach Keshawa Perera is a former Sri Lankan National player and a SL basketball level 2 coach who currently runs the Stallions Basketball Academy in Qatar.

Stallions Sports Qatar was the brainchild of its founder former BRC, HNB and Dharmaraja College cricketer Sidath Tennakoon. He has started Stallions in Qatar in 2013 as a cricket academy together with Ashan Perera a former St. Peter player, Lakshitha Perera a former BRC player and Manoj Arthant from India.  

Stallions Sports now boasts for more than 350 players registered for Cricket, Basketball and badminton in Qatar coached by 25 qualified and experienced coaches. 

The Stallions Qatar coaching team consist several coaches from Sri Lanka such as Saman Fonseka, Lahiru Chathranga, Haresh Rathnayaka, Manjula Sandanayaka, Nilatha Abeyrathna, Suresh Fernando Gadward Arentdz, Umanga Basnayaka, Dinesh Jayalath and Tariq Mohamed together with a number of coaches from India, Pakistan and Australia.

Stallions have opened a branch in Singapore in 2016 and managed by coaches from Sri Lanka Oshadha Warnapura, Mithila Rajapaksha, Yasas Kalubowila and Chamal Siriwardena. 

Their expansion plans include Bahrain and Sri Lanka in near future. 

Stallions also have collaboration in Yorkshire, UK where they will exchange players between Qatar and UK and expect to provide the opportunity to young and talented Sri Lankan players to participate in this programme in future. 

Stallions group Head Coach and CEO Sidath Tennakoon mentioned that “The main aim of our Basketball Camp is to provide top quality coaching by foreign coaches to the talented players in Sri Lanka and promote the game in the country. We expect to conduct similar camps for Cricket and Rugby in future.  We are looking at opening a top quality, high performance sports academy in Sri Lanka so that we can provide multiple benefits to the young talent in Sri Lanka through our Player Exchange Program, Coach Exchange Program, International tours, Tournaments and various other sports events conducted across the world.” 

More details of Stallions Basketball Camp can be obtained by visiting their website www.stallionsqatar.com.