Sports
COACH Innocent Nwankwo, Secretary of the Nigerian Handball Coaches Association, on Sunday advocated more medal hauls for handball events at the biennial National Sports Festival (NSF).
Nwankwo made the call while speaking with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Benin from the sidelines of the ongoing 20th National Sports Festival (NSF) in Edo.
According to him, many states loose interests in participating in handball event at the festival because it carries only one medal.
He said that this had made it unattractive considering the capital intensive nature of the game.
“Some of the states do not want to come for team’s event because they see it as being capital intensive, hence, they try to drop team events.
“Let’s look at the NSF, it is one medal for Handball. But, I will try as much as possible to put forward a proposal to the Handball Federation of Nigeria (HFN) so that we may have additional hauls for the festival which may attract other states to key into the handball.
“Today, they will tell you we have six players coming to vie for one goal medal.”
He explained that he had reflected on the issue and he was going to the boardroom and get some proposals across to key stakeholders, the HFN and other handball enthusiasts so that they could buy into them.
“At the end of the day, we may be having up to seven medals to be won in the NSF.
“If we are able to do that and they buy it in; by the next NSF, we will have more medals for handball, not just one,” he said.
The coach, who is a member of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) coaching crew, identified beach handball, three-aside, four-aside and mixed doubles as those categories he would propose.
Nwankwo said that mixed handball team would comprise two males and female.
He said the proposal would be put forward on the platform of the handball coaches association.
“I want to rate Nigeria high because in the last three to four years, we had attended virtually all championships. Kudos to us and the HFN.”
He noted that the championships they participated in was a plus. HFN was the first to organise a competition after the COVID-19 lockdown was eased.
“Handball has been a pacesetter and will continue to set the pace for other sports” he added .
NAN
– April 11, 2021 @ 14:40 GMT |
Tags: Coach advocates more medal events for handball at NSF
