IMMEDIATE past president of the National Basketball Federation of Trinidad and Tobago (NBFTT) Claire Mitchell was voted onto the Central America and Caribbean Basketball Confederation (CONCENCABA) board in February, and onto the Commonwealth Basketball Council’s (CBC) board on March 9.
She was nominated by the CBC executive in 2023 and by the Bahamas Federation in 2024.
Trinidad and Tobago's George Leacock, who was nominated by the NBFTT, was deemed invalid after a secondary review by the International Basketball Federation (FIBA), which found that his nomination “was not submitted in accordance with the stipulated nomination guidelines”, according to a FIBA statement on March 6.
Mitchell’s CONCENCABA role is more of a supervisory one as both CBC and Central American Basketball Confederation (COCABA) are sub-zones that manage their own strategic and action plans which flow into the FIBA Americas sub-zone called CONCENCABA.
Her CBC role is more hands-on as the sub, sub-zones are where the actual work happens.
On her recent appointments, Mitchell was pleased to be in a position to help elevate basketball in Trinidad and Tobago, and the region, by extension.
“The CBC presidents felt that they needed me on their executive because of the unique talents and expertise that I bring to the table. I have worked with them over the last seven years and they have come to regard me as a necessary piece of the CBC puzzle,” Mitchell said on March 13.
In response to why she was nominated by the Bahamas and not by Trinidad and Tobago, Mitchell confirmed that “According to the CBC statutes, while most executive board members must be nominated by their federations, at large members are persons who possess certain abilities or special positions that can contribute to the organisation even though he/she may not be a part of our sport.”
They do not even need to be involved in basketball, she said. For that reason, any federation could have nominated Mitchell for the post.
Mitchell added that she is now heavily involved with the CBC executive team in ensuring that all 23 islands at least qualify for FIBA 3x3 AmeriCup 2025 - a challenge that was thrown out to CBC by the FIBA secretary general at the 2024 CBC Annual General Meeting on March 9.
For example, Bahamas now has a certified 3x3 person as of last week and is planning its first of the required three 3x3 events for 2024 to become eligible for 2025.
“You would note that prior to 2020, basketball was not in the Olympic cycle. However, after qualifying for AmeriCup 2021, Trinidad and Tobago went on to qualify for every Olympic-bound event,” she said.
Those events were the first ever Junior Pan Am Games in TTO history (Columbia 2021), the inaugural FIBA AmeriCup (Miami 2021), Junior Caribbean Games (Guadeloupe 2022, placed fourth), the first-ever Commonwealth Games qualification in TTO history and only English speaking Caribbean team (England 2022), first-ever World Cup U18 World Cup (Hungary 2022), U16 Girls COCABA/CBC Qualifiers (Nicaragua 2022) and
