Lajide Oluranti, the Overall Referee of the 45th Asoju-Oba Table Tennis Championships, said on Monday that the championship was organised to bridge the gap between the elite players and budding talents.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!Oluranti told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos that the championships had served as a veritable platform for junior players to showcase their skills.
The annual championship which commenced on Nov. 25 got concluded on Nov. 29 at the Molade Okoya-Thomas Sports Hall, Teslim Balogun Stadium, Lagos.
“This has been an age-long grassroots discovery if you would call it that, for our sport and this year, it has happened again but in a new dimension.
“In the sense that this year we are looking at a way of bridging the gap between our senior players, our junior players and our cadet players.
“So we designed a programme for this year such that it was possible for those in the junior to have an opportunity to play against the senior.
“And those in the cadet will have an opportunity to play with those in the junior. All in the way of making them interplay with themselves.
“The effect may not be noticeable now but in another two, three years, we will notice it.“
The referee said that the skills of the junior players would be improved soon.
“There was a time in this country when the standard between the senior and the junior was so close that if a junior player met a senior player, it was always difficult to determine who would win.
“But at a time we left that to chance and it became such that when a senior player is meeting a junior player, the result is given and the senior player would win.
“So, we went back to the archive to see what we were doing at that time and how we can get back to it.
“I just pray that we have more of tournaments like this where you have the senior, the junior, the cadet having to play together.“
Oluranti advised organisers of similar competitions to adopt the strategy used in the 2013 Asoju Oba Championships in order to train a wide array of future world champions. (NAN)
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