Vincentian National, Basketball Player Opong Bramble has signed his first professional contract with Ockelbo Basket, Sweden.
Bramble who was born in Saint Vincent, later moved to Maryland in the US and then Saskatchewan, Canada.
Opong started playing basketball at the age of eight and dreamed of the NBA. It was during high school that he began to feel that basketball was something to bet on.
Bramble started studying in the U.S. and saw the level that was there, he felt he had a chance and later became a student at the New York Institute of Technology where he also played basketball. But in 2020, there was an unexpected outage due to covid.
Two weeks before the 2020-21 season, the school was closed due to covid.
“We players stayed in a hotel and trained, I also coached a bunch of 8-9 year-olds which was fun”.
In the fall of August 2021, Opong received a scholarship to play with the Christian Brothers Buccaneers in Memphis. After the season, it was finally Ockelbo’s basket in Sweden that was able to sign the Altetiske two-meter man.
When asked what he thinks of Ockelbo as a society and what he had expectations, Opong replies that it’s actually busier than he thought.
“It’s quite similar to the place in Canada where I’ve lived, there are a lot of childhood friends who still hang out with each other and have close ties in the community. The people here are open-minded and I feel really welcomed”, he said.
