Since the inception of the Sprite Ball Championship in 2007, the heralded high school basketball competition, basketball at the burgeoning stages of Ghanaian individuals has caught fire to famously shut out the country’s dominant sport-football.
The competition will celebrate 10 years come January 2017 and as a result, the nostalgic milestones and happenings down the years are being trumpeted all over the country.
Much has been said of the championship winning teams in the past; talk of Mfantsipim School winning three straight championships in the boys division and Aggrey Memorial Mount Zion dominating the girls division is rife whenever Sprite Ball comes up.
However, one school that is part of the Sprite Ball fabric is Awudome Senior High School which is based in Ghana’s picturesque and culturally diverse Volta Region. Dating back to 2010, where the school’s female basketball team featured in the regional competition alongside Kpando Technical, Mawuli and Kadjebi Asato, Awudome Senior High School has made strides in bumping its way up the difficult ever changing spectrum that is the girls division in the Sprite Ball Championship.
Several years down the line, Awudome’s names has been a constant feature on the roster of schools competing in the event with the latest being the not too distant tenth edition held earlier this year in January.
The Volta Regional champions stormed into the championship on the back of a wonderful showing at the preliminary stage of the event by blitzing the likes of main rivals Kadjebi-Asato, Mawuko Girls, OLA senior High School among others. Whereas some schools get lucky bounces along the way to venture deep into the event, Awudome hasn’t so lucky with the side having to make the steep climb every time.
In 2015, Keta Senior High School won the competition in the boys division but any hope of their regional female counterparts doing same were dashed as Awudome got drawn in Group A alongside defending champions T.I.Ahmadiyya, former champions St. Mary’s Senior High School and 2014 bronze medalist Mfantseman Girls Senior High School. T.I. Ahmadiyya went on to win the competition and Mfantseman came third.
Matters worsened at the main competition in the 2016 Championship as Awudome got paired alongside debutants Accra Wesley Girls High School who surprised bookmakers, connoisseurs and fans to make it all the way to the final game before falling to Aggrey Memorial.
Awudome for the record, lost 12-16 to the side at the group stage to miss out on a place in the final four and the chance to compete for what would have been a maiden medal at the competition.
The obscurity of Awudome has seen the school punch above its weight and excelled especially with arguably the most celebrated high school basketball competition in the West African Subregion.
The tenth anniversary of Sprite Ball comes at the right moment for Awudome Senior High School to entrench its unquestioned royalty in the Volta Region and take a step further by taking on the nation to be crowned champions.
