ANAMBRA SCH SPORTS FESTIVAL: VISION SEC SCH, NNEWI EMERGES OVER ALL BEST

UCHE NDEKE

The Anambra School Sports Festival has ended at the Awka Township Studium with the U17 male football match between Washington Memorial Grammar School Onitsha and Bubendorf Memorial Grammar School, Adazi-Ani.

Washington Memorial defeated Bubendorf Memorial by 4-2 on penalties after a barren draw.

In a match decided earlier, Uncle Ralph De Great male team emerged winners of the U13 football event after stunning their fellow finalists, Eri Primary School 3-1 in the entertaining game also played at the Awka Township Stadium.

The winners who showed a scintillating display of skill and strength decided the game in the first half when they netted three goals before the break.

The Aguleri young lads came back more determined in the second half but their goal in the early minutes of the half could not give the needed turnaround.

In a message to the closing ceremony, Governor Chukwuma Soludo said the event was a beginning of a new dawn for sports development in Anambra.

Governor Soludo, who was represented by the Deputy Governor, Dr. Onyekachukwu Ibezim, described sports as having immense health, social and intellectual benefits even as he noted that his administration would adopt a bottom-up approach to the development of the sector.

For his part, Chairman of the Anambra State Sports Development Commission, Mr. Patrick-Estate Onyedum, said the school sports festival was an addition to the successes of the Commission within the nine month period he had steered the ship in Anambra sports sector.

He said the festival, which started on May 17, began with about 17,000 students from about 610 primary and secondary schools, which progressed through community, Local Government Area and zonal elimination stages.

According to Mr. Onyedum, outstanding student athletes from the competition will go on to represent Anambra State at the upcoming National Youth Games, which will hold in September this year and the National Sports Festival to be hosted by Ogun State next year.

Meanwhile, Vision Secondary School, Nnewi emerged the overall best performing school in the festival while three students went home with three brand new bicycles through raffle draws courtesy of the Chairman of the Sports Commission.

EDITED BY CHUKWUBUIKE MADU