PEOPLES DAILY| TUESDAY, JUNE 4, 2013
PAGE 46
Sports
Coach urges FG’s support for Deaflympics Games
NTTF urges athletes to combine education with sports
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he Nigeria Table Tennis Federation (NTTF) has again reiterated the essence of combining sports with education stressing those upcoming athletes must resist the temptation of focusing whole soul in sports without thinking a career outside sports in their later years. Oguntade, who urges the younger athletes to take a cue from some former and current national and international players like Segun Odegbami, Cecilia Arinye and Adokiye Amiesimaka, Blessing Okagbare, Chika Chukwumerije, among others, said without education it would be difficult for them to have meaningful life once they retired from sports or had serious career-threatening injury. ``Upcoming players need to embrace both education and sport without giving priority to one above the other,’’ Oguntade said. According to him, former athletes like Arinye, Odegbami, Amiesimaka and hosts of others are having meaningful life today years after quitting active sports because they had formal education. Oguntade noted that Arinye, a former table tennis player is currently the Director of Sports, University of Lagos, while exinternational Odegbami, is currently the Director, International Sports Academy, Wasimi, Ogun. He also recalled that exinternational, Amiesimaka, a onetime Executive Committee member of the Nigeria Football Federation, was also a former Attorney General of Rivers. ``Sports will get the upcoming players to a certain stage in life, but when they can longer be active, when they have gotten to their peak, that is when education comes in. ``It is then their educational background will be their means of livelihood. Sports will make their names to be important during their sporting days, but what happens when they do not get a formal education while participating in sports. ``They will be forgotten because there is nothing to fall back on. Certificate is necessary, that is why you see a lot of uneducated athletes on the streets but with education you have something to rely on,’’ he said. He added that even administrative sports officers find time to improve on their educational standard because they know that one day they would retire and rely on their certificate. According to him, athletes with sound educational background will be bold to mix with his or her colleagues in national and international scenes. The secretary, however, urged the Ministry of Sports and the National Sports Commission to provide the enabling environment for athletes to combine education with their sporting career.
Bolaji Abdullahi, Sports Minister
he national Deaflympic football team has appealed to the Federal Government and corporate organisations to support the team as it prepares for upcoming Summer Deaflympics in Sofia, Bulgaria. Kamiludeen Oladimeji, the team’s coach, who made the appeal yesterday in Lagos, said that the support would help to enhance the team’s chances at the competition. According to Wikipedia, the Deaflympics are an International Olympic Committee (IOC)-
sanctioned event at which deaf athletes compete at an elite level. Deaflympics were previously called World Games for the Deaf, and International Games for the Deaf. However, unlike the athletes in other IOC-sanctioned events (i.e., the Olympics, the Paralympics, and the Special Olympics), the Deaflympians cannot be guided by sounds (i.e., the starter’s guns, bullhorn commands or referee whistles). To qualify for the competition,
Judo association to train 40 young judokas, says Scribe
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he Lagos State Judo Association (LSJA.) has concluded plans to kick-start the training of some 40 budding judokas that were identified at a recent coaching clinic, according to association’s scribe Ijeoma Soribe. Speaking on efforts to generate fresh talents, Soribe, said those to be trained were among 180 students that participated in the clinic conducted from May 20 through 23 in Lagos.
“The training is to further develop their potential in order to be wellgrounded in martial arts,’’ she said, adding that the judokas would be groomed to develop their skills to enable them participate in future competitions. ``The 40 judokas will go through intensive training from later in the week, for them to understand the rudiments of the sport. ``If their interest is well stimulated,
this will put them in a vantage position to take over from the ageing ones, who may no longer be fit to engage in competitive judo,’’ she said. Soribe said the association had enough modern equipment to ensure proper training of the talents to international standards. She also said that the association was poised to discover the many talents that abound in schools in the state.
athletes must have a hearing loss of at least 55 db in their “better ear”. The competition has been scheduled to hold from July 26 to Aug. 4 in the Eastern European nation. ``We are begging the country, the ministry and every other area to please try and support us very well so that we can get to the standard of making something back if we eventually travel to Bulgaria for the Deaflympics Games. ``But in a nutshell, we need more encouragement for the guys, so that it can motivate them to gear up more, because they are very happy that they have qualifying for the Deaflympics Games for the second time in the history of their sport. “Since the federation has tried their possible best and the Nigeria Deaf Football Association is trying their possible best to make sure they make contact with some people or company to help them. “In a nutshell we need something like allowances to encourage this guys, even we the officials, because it is not an easy task to train special sport.`` Oladimeji said that financial constraints had made it impossible for the country’s athletes to participate in the 2009 edition of the Deaflympics in Taipei.
Roland Garros
Djokovic, Haas sail into quarterfinals W
orld No 1 Novak Djokovic overcame the loss of his first set of the tournament to advance to the quarterfinals at
Novak Djokovic
Roland Garros with a 4-6 6-3 6-4 6-4 victory over 16th seed Philipp Kohlschreiber yesterday. Djokovic got off to a sluggish
opening as German Kohlschreiber started out by firing on all cylinders. The Serbian top seed, however, was quickly back in control,
breaking early in each set and saving a few break points on the way to a somewhat uneventful victory. Djokovic next faces German Tommy Haas, the 12th seed, for a place in the semifinals as he bids to land the trophy at Roland Garros for the first time. Earlier, Haas became the third oldest man, and the first German in 17 years, to reach the quarterfinals when he swept past racquet-smashing Russian Mikhail Youzhny. Haas, 35, is also the oldest man to make a last eight at any Grand Slam since Andre Agassi at the 2005 US Open. The 12th seed, who made history in the third round when he needed a record 13 match points to beat John Isner, eased past Youzhny, 6-1, 6-1, 6-3 in just 84 minutes. Former world No 2 Haas had lost on clay in straight sets to Youzhny in Rome last month. But he was never troubled on Monday, winning 10 games in succession after losing the opener. Such was Youzhny’s frustration that he smashed his racquet nine times against his courtside chair, sending splinters spiralling into the air at Court Suzanne Lenglen. The violence of his outburst made him an instant YouTube hit even as the match was still being played. Haas will be the first German in the last eight in Paris since Michael Stich and Bernd Karbacher in 1996.