This week, The Sunday Morning Happinez spoke to Sandeep and Sanjaan Gunaratna, the team behind Huskies Sports. 

• Tell us a little about yourselves.

Sandeep: Hi, I’m Sandeep Gunaratna, the founder, CEO, and head coach of Huskies Sports Academy. I currently hold a postgraduate qualification that I’ve completed in marketing. I have been playing basketball for the past 16 years of my life. You could conveniently say that it’s become more of a lifestyle than a sport for me at this point. I have been playing basketball since I was seven. During my schooling career, I was fortunate enough to captain my team for five years bringing in numerous championships at zonal, international, and all-island levels. My greatest achievements include captaining the all-island champion team and also being a proud recipient of national colours for basketball. After high school, I knew I wanted to continue playing the sport – to further my talent by moving to play professional basketball. This is when I partnered with and started to represent Fairfirst Insurance in mercantile tournaments during the years 2019-2022. I’ve been coaching kids since 2018 because I knew that I wanted to share my talent with budding new players of the sport. It makes my heart overflow with love, joy, and pride to see the kids excel in basketball and achieve great heights in the sport.

Sanjaan: Hi, my name is Sanjaan Gunaratna. I’m currently an undergraduate and a coach at the Huskies Sports Academy. Basketball has always been that one sport that has been so special that it has become not only a sport but a passion. In terms of my experience, I’ve played basketball throughout my schooling career for over 12 years and won countless championships across international all-island school competitions. I am also proud to say that during my senior prefectship year, I was the games captain and basketball captain for the year 2019/2020. My greatest achievement overall would be being chosen to represent my motherland in the 5×5 matches for the SABA Championship where we were placed first runners-up in 2019. I was also selected for 3×3 matches for the under-18 world cup series – my team and I, unfortunately, couldn’t travel to Hungary for the matches due to a Covid-19 cluster within the team. I now play professional basketball for mercantile tournaments representing Commercial Credit and Finance as this organisation is closest to my heart. I’ve also been coaching kids of age three and higher for over three years and I truly enjoy every moment of each session. 

• What drove you to start Huskies?

Sandeep: When I finished my schooling career, I knew that I wanted to give back to society in terms of enhancing the standard we hold for basketball. I knew that the first step towards this goal would be to start guiding the young players in the sport to ensure that they raise the bar for basketball. Although I had this dream, it wouldn’t have become a reality if my colleagues didn’t refer me to a mother of two daughters who was looking for a coach. I took it up without any hesitation and I’m so glad I did since that was the push I needed to achieve my long-overdue dream. After around two to three weeks of coaching, I realised that this could be something bigger. Hence, Huskies was born. We then launched our academy on 10, December 2018 with the hope to groom the next generation of basketball players. Surprisingly, we have grown so much that now we stand at 350 active kids. To us, this academy is not just another coaching school but more like a family.

• How do you ensure players stay motivated throughout the coaching session?

We train kids from age three and higher so it’s safe to say that we have multiple age groups ranging from toddlers to adolescents. Due to how diverse the student population is, we’ve designated multiple training techniques personally curated for each age category. We have made sure to allocate a minimum of two coaches per session for beginners and intermediate-level players to ensure that we maintain a set standard for coaching. The coaches are trained to make sure that the kids grasp the right technique and execute the drill appropriately. All our coaches also make sure to remember each kid’s strengths. We believe that a niche approach to coaching our students results in constantly ascending levels of motivation and performance among our kids. Apart from our daily coaching sessions, we also have fun coaching camps out of which the personal favourite amongst many of our kids is the beach camp. These sessions consist of fun activities and drills specially designed to enhance endurance and team spirit.

• You also dropped Huskies merch last year. Tell us about it.

Yes! The merch was one of the best highlights of last year and to be honest it was way overdue. We had prepared for our official launch in 2019 but that is when the pandemic hit. With all the restrictions and lockdowns, we had to come to a consensus that the merch will have to wait since we wanted it to be the exact way we envisioned it. These pieces were designed intricately through many sleepless nights. From the initial sketches to individually picking out all of the material, the entire process was a tedious task as we wanted nothing less than perfection. We weren’t able to do a mass-scale production due to how unpredictable the pandemic was; therefore, we switched to a more niche production scale – producing over 200 pieces of shorts, skinnies, and t-shirts in a variety of colours and prints, and we sold out within three days of the launch. We hope to aim for more innovative and unique lines of clothing in the future.

• Do you host any competitions for outsiders? 

We haven’t been able to host as many competitions as we wanted to as we never had a venue of the calibre we expected. However, we were able to host a successful 2×2 basketball fiesta where over 300 participants took part with an audience of over 400. Now that we have our own one-of-a-kind basketball court, we hope to host internal and external competitions for our students and external players who have a collective love for the sport. We hope to execute these events on an extravagant scale where it will be a basketball carnival rather than a few matches. We want to be an academy that provides high-quality and holistic experiences.

• Tell us about the Huskies court you’ve built recently. Will you be renting it out in the future?

Sandeep: We’ve always wanted to build our own court as we knew how important and big it would be for the academy. In October 2022, we commenced work at our new location and in five months, we were able to move in. This court holds so much value to us because Sanjaan and I did a lot of manual work in order to build our dream court as soon as possible. The new court includes a café, gaming stations, space for tuition classes, and a sports equipment store which will be launched soon. Yes, we could rent the court. Our working hours are from 7 a.m.-11 p.m. We will be offering the court for basketball, futsal, tennis, and for handball. But before we had our own place, we held our practice sessions at Decathlon. The team at Decathlon truly was one of the most supportive communities we’ve ever been a part of so here’s a big shout-out to them. Now, we are proud to say that we own the number one court in Colombo. Don’t trust us? Come over and see for yourself.

• What’s one piece of golden advice you’d give to sports enthusiasts looking to start their own academy?

We’ll tell you what we needed to hear four years ago – “Start somewhere and don’t wait until the time is right because the time will never be right.” What we’ve learned over the past few years is that nothing is predictable and nothing is going to work in a set-in-stone kind of way. We never saw ourselves opening our very own court in such a short period of time but we did. All it takes is a thought and the right mindset, but most importantly the right intention. Be true to yourself and the values you stand for and work for them consistently.

PHOTO © ISURI CHANDRASIRI