NAIROBI, Kenya, Jul 26 – The Ministry of Sports has embarked on an ambitious initiative to identify and nurture promising sports talents in different schools across 15 counties.
The programme, dubbed ‘Making of Champions of Tomorrow’, targets approximately 20,000 schoolchildren, aged 6-16 years, who will be tutored on the basics of various sports including volleyball, athletics, football, basketball and rugby.
Speaking on behalf of the ministry, sports event organiser Jimmy Geeraerts said the idea is to provide exceptional talents with a launchpad for their careers.
“The idea is to go out there and find young talent. We have football and then we have other disciplines that, maybe, many children have not been able to access facilities and therefore lost interest in them. If we see any talent standing out in these disciplines, we will have daily meetings with their professional coaches. Each discipline will have a professional coach to guide the youngsters,” Geeraerts said.
The first phase of the initiative targets Thika, Embu and Nyeri before resuming on August 26 after the General Elections.
Geeraerts is hopeful the programme will unearth the next Ferdinand Omanyala (Africa 100m champion) in addition to other sportspersons who have brought glory to Kenya.
“You say probably but I say hopefully from among this group we will find the next Omanyala. Let’s hope that it will be a long-term initiative. We will see how it goes and if all goes well then it might become even bigger,” he said.
He was speaking at Ofafa Jericho Primary School, Nairobi during a rolling out of the initiative.
During the ceremony, the schoolchildren were taken through their paces in football, volleyball and athletics.
In athletics, they were taught warm up, shot put and jumping techniques whereas football prospects were tutored on dribbling, passing and shooting.
In volleyball, the pupils received training on passing, serving, tossing and hitting.
Ofafa Jericho’s headmistress, Catherine Njoroge, said the initiative will not only benefit participants in their sports careers but life in general.
“I want to urge all young people to come out and show their talents. It will help nurture young talent and the students are exercising their bodies. Also, having invited all these schools, the children are learning about the importance of teamwork,” she said.
