17 October 2007

NIGERIA : Nestle Milo Secondary School Basketball Championship Kicks-off

Model Secondary School, Maitama, Abuja, and Ebonyi Government Technical College, Abakaliki, are the female teams that will dunk off at the national finals of this year's Nestle Milo Secondary Schools' Basketball Championship. In the male category, Ahmadiyya College, Kano, and Success Private School, Maiduguri, are the teams battling for honours in the four- day event.

Managing Director/CEO, Nestle Nigeria PLC, Mr. Klaus Wachsmuth, gave the assurance that Nestle Milo remains committed to providing opportunities for Nigerian kids to develop and achieve their potentials as sports heroes.

He said the company is fully prepared to organize a befitting celebration for the eventual lucky champions out of the six teams in each of the boys and girls categories that have qualified to vie for honours at the grand finale of this 9th edition of the tournament, which dunked off yesterday at the Indoor sports hall of the national stadium.

Category Business Manager (Beverages) Mr. Walter Okafor, explained that each of the winning teams in both the boys and girls categories will go home with =N=150,000, while the first and second runners-up will get =N=100,000 and =N=75,000 respectively. In addition, the champions and the first runner-up teams will be given a pair of basketball uprights for their schools.

"There will be trophies for Fair Play, Most Valuable Player (MVP), Most Entertaining Teams, Best 3-point shooter, and a medal for each member of the top three teams, while certificates of participation will be presented to all the participants, including all match officials and commissioners", Mr. Okafor said.

In his own contribution, Mr. Remi Olowude, Chairman, National Collegiate Sports Foundation (NCSF) pointed out that over 60,000 boys and girls who represented over 3,000 schools across the 36 states of the federation including the FCT, competed in the championship at both the state eliminations and conference play-offs.

"This level of participation marks a significant improvement, and also shows that the championship continues to grow in all its facets", said Olowude who was represented by Mr. Lanre Balogoun.

It will be recalled that this 9th edition of the championship started with the state preliminaries in February, after which the conference play-offs kicked-off in June at the six usual conferences: the Savannah, Sahara, Central, Equatorial, Atlantic and Western. At the end of the conference play-offs, the six teams that came out tops in each category are now set to aim at the hoops in a grand finale which has been tipped to be highly competitive and entertaining.

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