KFC Star Search Basketball & Life Skills Development Camp celebrates 25 Years of transforming lives through basketball

This year marks a milestone moment for Jamaican basketball, as KFC celebrates its 25th anniversary. For a quarter of a century, this annual residential development camp has served as a launching pad for the island’s brightest young basketball talents, and since its inception, its legacy has lived on, changing lives for the better, one camper at a time.

A Legacy Born from Vision and Partnership

While the Jamaica Basketball Association (JaBA) runs developmental programmes throughout the year, the organisation also instituted the annual Star Search Basketball and Life Skills Development Camp, a five-day residential experience held each summer. It all began as a joint venture between JaBA and the US-based Jamaica Basketball Development Inc. (JBD Inc.), formally launched to create yet another platform for the island’s best young basketball players to further develop and showcase their talents to invited college coaches from the USA.

The camp’s twenty-five-year legacy owes much to the prolific support of the Jamaica Basketball Development Inc., whose Jamaican-born founders, Michael Minto and Enid Sterling-Agnus, were monumental and instrumental in its conceptualisation from birth. Their vision, shared with JaBA, gave rise to a programme that continues to change the trajectory of young lives across the island. Sterling-Agnus, who has since passed, receives her flowers posthumously as one of the founding architects of this enduring institution.

The camp’s success over the decades has also been built on the dedication of those who gave themselves to it year after year. Former Camp Director Elfraito ‘Alf’ Remikie, now deceased, was a stalwart of the programme for over two decades, and his contribution remains woven into the very fabric of Star Search.

An Identification Camp with National Reach

Each year, over one hundred of the island’s most talented student-athletes, ages 15 to 20, are invited to this Identification Camp (ID Camp), where overseas college coaches and recruiters share their knowledge and scout for new talent. The camp provides an advanced, high-performance environment where hundreds of Jamaica’s brightest young basketball talents converge for a week of intensive training, competitive play, and personal development.

KFC has been a steadfast partner in this journey, supporting the camp continually in its early years before amplifying that commitment over fifteen years ago to become the programme’s major sponsor, a testament to KFC’s long-term investment in Jamaica’s youth development.

Alumni Who Give Back

A defining feature of Star Search is the cycle of mentorship it has created. Many past scholarship recipients return each year to share their experiences and mentor the next generation of campers. This past year’s camp welcomed back several former scholarship holders, including:

• Daniel Rose & Mugabe Thomas — Cedarville University
• Owen Hall — University of Illinois
• Damion Staples — Iowa State University
• Jason Francis & Andrew Grant — Southeastern Illinois 
• Richard Andrews — Cal State Bakersfield
• Kentan Facey — University of Connecticut
• Samardo Samuels — University of Louisville
• Romaro Gill — Seton Hall University
• Kofi Cockburn — University of Illinois
• Jordan Kellier — Williston State College
• Nick Richards — University of Kentucky

And the trend continues. Year after year, student-athletes who have come through the Star Search programme have gone on to secure educational opportunities at colleges and universities across the United States, turning summer camp dreams into degrees, careers, and in several cases, professional and collegiate basketball success.

Twenty-Five Years and Counting

Twenty-five years later, the KFC Star Search Basketball & Life Skills Camp has become much more than a household name. It is a tightly interwoven piece of the fabric of Jamaica’s basketball ecosystem, a launching pad for the island’s basketball future, and a living tribute to the founders, directors, sponsors, and mentors who built it from the ground up.

As JaBA celebrates this Silver Anniversary, the Association extends its deepest gratitude to the Jamaica Basketball Development Inc., founding visionaries Michael Minto and the late Enid Sterling-Agnus, longtime Camp Director the late Elfraito ‘Alf’ Remikie, title sponsor KFC, and the generations of coaches, mentors, and alumni who have carried this legacy forward.