Africa Woman in Badminton Award winner for 2019, Oby Solaja as resource person, addresses the participants.
Community Sport and Educational Development (CSED) Initiative a none governmental organisation which has as its focus, sports development at the grassroot has held two-day badminton clinic at St Theresa’s College, Nsukka, Enugu State.
Done in conjunction with lead partner of the South East Badminton Outreach and Badminton Federation of Nigeria’s zonal representative in the East, Obiageli Edoga Solaja, the clinic had in attendance, 10 schools and 12 games masters and mistresses from schools in Nsukka area.
This is the first training event that is jointly held by the Badminton Federation of Nigeria (BFN) and CSED Initiative, as part of the two years’ grassroots badminton development programme that was signed in April 2022.
The goal of this two-day training event is to build the capacity of the games masters/mistresses at the grassroots level and to provide Nigerian children/youths with access to learn the basic skills and technicalities that is required to develop their talent in badminton.
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Students from five boys’ schools and five girls’ schools in the Nsukka zone attended the event. The boys’ schools are; St Theresa’s College, Nsukka High School, Urban Boys Secondary School Nsukka and Community Secondary School Nru.
The girls’ schools are; St Cyprian’s Girls Secondary School, St Cyprian’s Special School, Urban Girls Secondary School and Queen of the Rosary Secondary School Nsukka.
Also in attendance were two mixed schools – Community Secondary School, Isienu and Government Technical College
Customary of CSED, the participating schools received sports equipment.
At the end of the training event, more than one hundred badminton rackets, shuttlecocks and badminton nets were donated to representatives of the schools that attended this training event.
Medals were also presented to some of the students that excelled in the demonstration games.
More than forty participants attended this event and some of them expressed their gratitude to the event organizers for taking their grassroots badminton development event to Nsukka.
According to CSED prime driver, Cornelius Ehimaghe, “grassroots approach is the key to the discovery of natural talents, nurturing and monitoring and eventual development of true elite athletes.”
In his message to the clinic’s attendees, he remarked that “what CSED has done in Nsukka zone is expose students who ordinarily would never have had the opportunity of ever touching badminton rackets as well engage in the actual play.
“And as they have been exposed to the basic skills and technicalities of the game, the seed has been shown and it will sure being forth good fruits and amazing results”, he concluded.
