For years, FYBA has been giving the Fil-Am youth an opportunity to enhance their athletic skills through open gyms, basketball clinics, house leagues and NABA tournaments. There has been an improvement, evident through their showing in the annual NABA tournaments, with all 4 youth teams making it deep into the tourney. Most of its high school kids are playing in their junior varsity and varsity teams. But one thing that most of the members have been clamoring is some kind of travel team, a select team, or what some would term an AAU type of team that would have basketball programming all year round. Some coaches have taken their own initiative, like Roy Nafarrette of the Mainit Tykes team, whose team practices twice a week all year round for the past two years. He has been entering his team, mostly composed of FYBA players including one non-Filipino kid to AAU type tournaments. Jess Moreno, parent of Gerard Moreno told us that Coach Roy is hard working, and that Coach Roy’s dedication has truly improved his and other kids ability to play at a higher level. Another parent of a kid in the Mainit team, Rollie Rivera remarked that it would be “good to see something similar to the Mainit team in all divisions.” Some FYBA kids have been members of the travel teams, some AAU teams, some school sponsored teams, but this time, FYBA would want to offer FYBA Select, where kids are provided basketball programming, development and training all year round. These kids will be mentored by a FYBA Select Committee, an all volunteer group composed of high school coaches, AAU coaches, NABA coaches, basketball trainers who would get together and design a basketball program for the FYBA Select Team. The FYBA Select Team will sport the new FYBA Select jerseys which are sponsored by local businesses in the DC Metro area and FYBA community members.
