40th National Inter-School Athletics Championships |16 June 2016

Anse Boileau, Anse Royale and SIT aiming for title defence

The National Inter-school Athletics Championship returns this Saturday

This year the National Inter-School Athletics Championship will take place for the 40th time, where athletes from primary, secondary and post-secondary institutions will once again battle out for the ultimate prize of being named the best school.

It has for the past 40 years been the most watched and popular sporting event in the country and despite since last year being held on June 18, rather than the traditional June 29, the championship remains the event most schools work towards as soon as the school year starts.

In last year’s championship, seven records were broken, with Pointe Larue secondary’s Stevio Legaie breaking two of those records in the under-16 100m and 200m sprint events. The other record setters last year were Samia Almaze of the School of Business Studies and Accounting (SBSA), Seychelles Institute of Arts and Design’s (Siad) Jean-Eve Roseline, Anse Royale secondary’s Maura Raoul, Dylan Sicobo and the girls’ relay teams from the Seychelles Institute of Technology (SIT) and the Anse Royale secondary.

The hope is that more records will be shattered this Saturday, with the competition expected to begin at 10am at Stad Linite.

“We do not have any changes to this year’s championships, where there will be the same 96 track & field events, along with the same number of trophies to be won,” said the chairman of the championship’s organising committee, Wilfred Adrien.

Mr Adrien also said that they want to keep things simple this year, to avoid any of the issues that occurred especially with the results recently, while also ensure that all athletes are able to compete to the very best of their abilities.

Meanwhile, the three defending champions from the three categories are still putting the final touches to their preparations as they look for another great day on the tracks.

Anse Boileau primary are the champions in their category and Sir Jeff Appassamy, who is coaching the young athletes, believes it will be tough to defend their title, although not impossible.

“We have been training intensively for the past weeks and the athletes are well aware of the task ahead of them,” said Sir Jeff as he is known to his students.

He did admit that they did not do too well in the heats earlier this year, but they have trained hard to be ready for the challenge of La Digue school, which Sir Jeff says is their main threat this year.

For the past few years, it has been Anse Royale, most notably their girls, who have been the dominant force in this competition and the school’s PE teacher, Sir Jeris Rachel, told Sports Nation that his athletes are ready.

“Our preparation has gone ok and the morale is high among the athletes who will be looking to retain our title,” he said.

He added: “ I think as usual, Praslin will be our main challengers, but with the improvement on our boys’ side, I think we will be able to defend our title.”

On the post-secondary front, it is SIT who are looking to retain their title and speaking to Sports Nation, the school’s Sports Officer for the championship, Dora Ernesta, said that it’s going to be very difficult for them.

“We have one of our best athletes out injured and our preparations have been affected a lot this year, especially since our final year students are sitting for international examinations and thus it has proved difficult to train regularly,” said Ms Dora.

She added that the heats were too early as at that point, students had just got into school and it was difficult to identify their best athletes.

S.N