Daily Independent Online.
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Monday, July 26, 2004.
‘Nigeria’s players youngest at ITF\CAT
tourney’
Anthony Abolo, Jr.
Reporter, Lagos
Nigeria players have been declared as the
youngest at the on going ITF|CAT
West and Central Africa 13
and under circuit. According to a tennis coach attached to the national
team, Benson Ishicheli “we fielded the
youngest players and the ITF is very impressed and happy with
us about it . Before the start of the circuit, the coaches met and agreed that
there would be no such thing as age cheating We agreed that we were going to
eliminate it completely so as to break away from the past and present children
who are truly thirteen years of age”.
He admitted that although
there were some children at the circuit
who were actually thirteen years
of age but because of their sizes, physiques and serves, they were prevented from participating in the event.
Asked if it was possible to determine the actual age of a child he said “ apart
from the size, when you look at the serves , you should be able to tell if a child
is truly thirteen or not.Some of the participating countries have much older
players but that is not for us to complain about”.
Ishicheli said the objective of fielding 13
-year olds was to be able to have a crop of children that would form the nucleus of a new generation of
tennis players that would receive further training after the on- going circuit
.“We are looking beyond this circuit. It is a long term project that
could take five to ten years. The emphasis now is catching them young and
laying a solid foundation for the future , that is exactly what we are going to
do”he said.
He disclosed that he and other coaches have
decided to do something to pull tennis out of the doldrums by starting a
grassroots tennis development
programme with or without
support remarking that he wanted to make a mark and leave something for the future.
According to him, “I teach tennis at
the Eko Le Meridien Hotels and I have decided that at the end of this circuit,
I will take one of the children to stay with me in my house.After school, we
would both go to the court daily to train.
The plan is to keep all of them together and possibly keep them in schools around
Surulere at our expense where we
could reach them easily to train together as a
group.”
He said the children would not be allowed
to go their different ways after the circuit as has been the tradition and that
they would be kept together in one place where they would be closely monitored.
“We will keep them in one place where we can monitor them closely .We
want to adopt a new strategy to develop the game in Nigeria”.
On Nigeria’s performance at the
circuit, Ishicheli said so far , he was impressed with his players especially
nine year old Abayomi Odekunle who won the last Milo Junior Tournament and whom
he branded the revelation of the tournament . He said that given the right
encouragement, the lad would do very well and also that he expected him to go
far in the circuit. The coach also said that another nine-year old ,Anthony Leo
from Kaduna State was doing well even though he was not a part of the team but
that he selected him to join the team so as to give him the
necessary exposure. Coach Ishicheli described Anthony as a fighter and expressed his love for the spirit the boy
possessed.
Meanwhile, the circuit has gone into the
second leg with the French speaking West African countries, Senegal, Benin,
Cote de’ Ivoire and Mali dominating.
