NASCOM, YSFON plan football tourney for schools

ysfonIn continuation of its efforts to encourage age grade tournament in schools, National Academicals Sports Committee (NASCOM) and Youth Sports Federation of Nigeria (YSFON) are planning to stage a national football tournament in schools.

According to NASCOM Chairman, Yemi Idowu, the idea of the competition is in line with the ideals of the committee, which is collaborating with component bodies in executing their programmes. YSFON is a component body of NASCOM.

“We just finished the 2013 National School Sports Festival and it will be ideal for us to keep up the momentum by also supporting YSFON in its programmes and that is why we want to partner them to organize this tournament for school age children. You will recall that we had always been emphasising that NASCOM is not going to organize competitions but that we will support component bodies by creating conducive environment for them to carry out their programmes,” Idowu said.

The NASCOM boss however, said that the modalities for the competition would be decided by YSFON while children across the country have equal opportunity to be part of the competition because not all them are in schools in certain parts of the country.

Already, Idowu said under the present dispensation of the National Sports Commission (NSC), an enabling environment has been created for school age sports to thrive in the country.

“Our target based on the mandate given to the committee by the NSC is to focus on schools and organization of competitions for school children in order to enhance talent identification. For us at NASCOM, we believe that regular competitions for students will help the country to quickly identify talented children, who will in near future become world-beaters. So we are going to work closely with YSFON to ensure that the arrangement for the tournament begins so that it will not affect the academics calendar in schools,” he added.

“We are already discussing with some potential sponsors to persuade them on the benefits of sponsoring the competition. They will definitely get good publicity from supporting a NASCOM programme. We are also getting ready for the 2014 National School Sports festival now,” Idowu said.

YSFON President, Nasir Gawuna confirmed this, saying that this is part of programme of the body, as preparations are top gear to put machinery in place for the tournament.

“As a member of NASCOM board, we have started putting proposal together to ensure that this tournament is organized and I want to assure you that when everything is set we will make it known including the modalities for the competition,” YSFON boss said.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *