The meeting that threatened to rock local basketball didn’t even budge the status quo – Derrick Garrett is still in and Ricardo Yearwood isn’t.
Far from resigning, the second-year head and the rest of his Barbados Amateur Basketball Association (BABA) executive are due for an even longer term after the Station Hill Cavaliers decided to drop the motion seeking to rescind Yearwood’s life ban.
It was the unexpected but serene turn to Wednesday’s annual general meeting – the prospects of which loomed ominously as Garrett’s council gave an assurance that it would quit if the general body voted to void the sanction.
But the meeting never took on a belligerent tone, and Yearwood’s club calmly opted to abandon their original motion in light of the legal ramifications of the pending court case between Yearwood and BABA.
The general body even proposed a motion that would see Station Hill asking for the sanction to be reviewed by an independent third party on condition that Yearwood drop the court injunction against the BABA.
However, up to press time, the Cavaliers said they hadn’t discussed what they would be seeking in their next motion, which is expected to be taken to the general body at an extraordinary meeting in March.
It’s just the latest in a saga that began last June when Yearwood was served with a life ban for dropkicking Cougars point guard Keith Mayers in a Premier League contest.
Just one week later, Station Hill threatened to seek legal action if the life ban was not immediately rescinded, before Yearwood himself filed an injunction in the law courts on July 11.
But BABA refused to soften its stance, and the hearing for the injunction – originally set for September 12 – was pushed back. No date has since been set for the rescheduling of the hearing.
The motion wasn’t the only major event surrounding the AGM as the general body ratified a new constitution that will have future executives serve four-year terms from 2014.
That change from the current two-year cycles is in keeping with International Basketball Federation’s new recently revisited statues, which dictate that member associations correlate their tenures with the World Championship cycle.
As a result of the constitution’s restructuring, the executive will now have eight elected officers instead of the current nine, featuring a president, first vice-president, second vice-president, honorary secretary, organising secretary, treasurer, assistant secretary/treasurer and public relations officer.
The shift to four-year terms has also added another year to the governance of Garrett’s executive, which was supposed to face elections next year but will stay on until 2014 to facilitate the reform.
Garrett is expected to present the BABA’s new constitution at the Caribbean Basketball Confederation’s annual general meeting tomorrow in Trinidad before the local 2012 season bounces off on February 11 with an awards gala.
The regular season opens with knockout competitions in all the divisions on February 14.
