74 Schools Participate in Milo Basketball Contest
A total of 74 schools across the 36 states of the federation, including the FCT, Abuja, have qualified for the conference stage of the 19th Milo Basketball Championship which dunks off in four geographical zones; Central Conference, Confluence Conference, Equatorial, as well as Western Conference.
The schools, represented by 37 male and 37 female teams emerged state champions at the state preliminaries of the competition and are now ready to compete at the conference stage. A total of 10, 000 secondary schools pan-Nigeria participated in the state preliminaries of the 2017 Milo championship competition.
The conference matches will run back-to-back until May 25, at the Indoor Sports Hall of the Abuja National Stadium, the Confluence Stadium, Lokoja, the Nnamdi Azikiwe Stadium, Enugu and the Akure Township Stadium.
Speaking on this year’s tournament, the Managing Director of Nestle Nigeria Plc, Mr. Mauricio Alarcon, said his organisation’s commitment to the project stems from the brand’s desire to give the Nigerian teens a platform to showcase their basketball talents while acquiring useful skills that will help shape their future.
According to him, “the Milo brand is passionate about tomorrow’s champions and has adopted the game of basketball to help youth learn valuable life lessons such as how to work together, how to be disciplined and how to be respectful. The demands of professional basketball also pushes them to do better in each game and above all, it is a healthy and fun way to stay physically and mentally active in order to also excel in the classroom,” Alarcon said.
The Secretary General, Nigeria School Sport Federation, Mrs. Bisi Joseph said her organisation have developed a data base of students and had their biometrics taken to as to discourage cheating in school competition and know the know the students who had participated in previous years.
“For each of the editions, we are constantly improving, we have opened a portal for registration so that the students can register. By zso doing, we would be able to determine our winners, know who have participated before and for how long, ” she said.
The Milo Basketball championship has been at the forefront of Nigerian Sports development for 19 years, producing numerous basketball talents, some of whom now play both in the national teams as well as leagues across the world. Some of the notable talents include Nkechi Akwashili, Chioma Udiaja, Upe Atusu, Nkem Akaraiwe and Patience Nene Upe who all played for the female national team, D’Tigress.