Growing up in a Country where Football is the native sport, it’s very difficult to like any other sports. Many different cultures have played a sport similar to the modern game of soccer but no one can really say with any certainty when or where soccer began but it is known that the earlier variations of what later became soccer were played almost 3000 years ago.

Sprite Ball - Ashanti Region

One of the earliest forms of soccer in which players kicked a ball around on a small field has been traced as far back to 1004 B.C. in Japan. The Munich Ethnological Museum in Germany has a Chinese text from approximately 50 B.C. that mentions games very similar to soccer that were played between teams from Japan and China. The Chinese kicked a leather ball ( hair-filled ) and it is known with certainty that a soccer game was played in 611 A.D. in the then Japanese capital, Kyoto.

The Romans played a game that somewhat resembled modern soccer. The early Olympic games in Rome featured twenty-seven men on a side who competed so vigorously that two-thirds of them had to be hospitalized after a fifty-minute game.

I thought a little bit of history will help us to appreciate the game we love. I have loved soccer since I was very young, unfortunately for me, I was banned from playing football when I was very young. My parents thought concentrating on my education will give me a greater opportunity in life. Looking at the way footballers are paid and loved today you may think they were wrong, but I really think they had a good reason. If you have education you can always fall back on when ever your sports career doesn’t became successful as you hope. Education is the Key.

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world – “Nelson Mandela”

You may be thinking by now that this guy is insane, he is suppose to be talking about basketball not soccer, I wanted to set the records straight, my first love is still “soccer”

A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity of working on a project with Rite Multimedia. It is an event management company which focuses on brand activation. They are the brain behind Basketball Ghana. Their goal is to take basketball from it current state in Ghana to the next level, which I think they are doing a good job with that.

They have successfully organized a couple of basketball competitions in Ghana namely Community Dunks, Legon Dunks, Junior Ball, Sprite Ball and UCBC. They are currently working on Sprite Ball Regional Tour, just last week the Rite Multimedia Team were in the Ashanti Region for “ASHANTI REGION SPRITE BALL CHAMPIONSHIP” which Kumasi Technical School (KTI) made history by becoming the first male school from the Ashanti Region to lift the Sprite Ball Championship on Saturday. Their next stop is in the Volta Region on the 27th November 2009 at Ho Stadium, I will be there, Hopeful I will see you there.

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Visit www.basketballghana.com for all the necessary info you may need.