NIBM Wild Cats champs at Inter-University Flag football

NIBM Wild Cats pocketed the inaugural EFLI Sri Lanka InterUniversity Flag Football Tournament played at the CR&FC ground in Longdon Place. The NIBM Wild Cats beat Kotalawela Defence University (KDU) Riffles in the two-day American Football tournament organised and conducted by EFLISri Lanka.

The Cup final between NIBM Wild Cats and KDU Riffles became a great showpiece as both teams dished out some excellent throwing and running down the flanks. Both teams performed well to handle the wet ball after a heavy shower before the Cup final. The game went in to extra time with the scores deadlocked at 13-all at full time. Then it went in to three minutes extra time with sudden death and in the second minute of the extra time NIBM Wild Cats touched down which gave them the victory by 19 points to 13.

IIT Dragons beat NSBM Storms to win the Plate championship while Jaffna Warriors, a team representing the universities of Jaffna, overcame Sargodha University from Pakistan. IIT Panthers beat NIBM Bees to win the Shield title.

Many fans of American Football came to witness the new sporting event enjoying the excitement of the first ever University Flag Football Tournament introduced to Sri Lanka this year. The exhibition game which was played prior to the Cup finals was a hit as it had many of the Colombo Lions players like Andrew Siriwardena, and national Rugby star Shenal Dias doing some excellent runs against an experienced US Embassy Invitation team.

Awards were given away by chief guest Erwin Haaze, the CEO of South Asia Gateway Terminals, Dilroy Fernando, the Director of EFLI-Sri Lanka, Dhashma Karunaratne, the Commercial and Marketing Manager of SAGT, Adam Pieasants of the US Embassy and Ted Muttiah, the COO, South Asia Gateway Terminals, the main sponsors of the tournament.

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