Commission facilitates community Central Games

THE Fiji National Sports Commission will facilitate its first ever Central Community Sports Games that will be held next week at the Fiji Sports Council complexes in Laucala Bay, Suva.

Commission chairman Peter Mazey said for the past six years they realised that for sports to continue to grow, they needed to grow sports in communities.

“We have realised that our communities need sports associations, need a structured approach and I am talking rural and urban,” he said.

“We now have 60 communities in our Central/Urban division and a total of 46 community associations have been set up around the country with staggered levels of readiness as far as completing the establishment toolkit requirements are concerned.

“One way of promoting completion of toolkit requirements is organising sports tournaments as enablers to completing the requirements.

“We’re coming together to run a huge Central Games to promote community sports associations.

“This is where all communities are coming together, representing their community whether in rural or urban to play in three sports divisions in men, women and mix sports.”

The Central Games comprises of teams representing community sports associations in Serua, Namosi, Naitasiri and Rewa.

He added the games will be run by the youths of different communities and will be facilitated by the commission.

“We had to first train people with sports administration so everybody is involved, now they have gone out to build up their community teams.”

Fiji 7s player Jerry Tuwai will be the chief guest.

Another initiative that the commission will set up is the sports ambassador program where top sports men and women will become brand ambassadors.

A budget of $250,000 will be is shared among the North, West and the Eastern divisions to hosted their games in October.

The Central Games will be held on December 8-10.