City Council to host sports tournament for Yabra youths

Belize City youths of up to fifteen years of age will have a chance to engage in various sporting disciplines with their peers next weekend through a sport programme facilitated by the Belize City Council. The event, which is slated for Saturday, October eleventh, will involve youths from the Yabra area who will participate in baseball, football, basketball and track and field games. But according to Councillor responsible for Youth and Sports, Philip Willoughby, the event will not be the only one of its kind.

Philip Willoughby, City Councillor, Youth & Sports
“We’ve engaged with the Ministry of Education to include the schools so students can participate from whichever school. They can bring as many teams as they want to. They don’t have to represent the school if they don’t want. They can represent an organisation, their community and so forth just to get them involved and engaged in some positive recreation after school is out. What we are looking to achieve: identifying at risk youths, one; working with them, two; helping them to get back into a structured education system and so forth and working along with them.”

Marion Ali
“How will this be done though? It’s a day set aside for a tournament and a set of games to be played but how will you actually seek to achieve what you just mentioned?”

Philip Willoughby
“Okay, well it just wont be an event for a particular day. The duration of the competitions are and will be contingent on the amount of participants and the teams that sign up. Once we have accomplished that leg of the work, we will then structure the schedule and we’ll know the duration of the tournament. hopefully, by the time we have completed the various disciplines we will be just around the summer and we go back into our development programmes where we educate the kids, we take them on educational trips, we take them to the cayes or some other village or district to engage with other youths.”

Any youth, fifteen years and younger, who wishes to take part can call Jerome Meheia at the Belize City Council’s Sports Unit at the Commercial Centre. The two top teams will collect trophies, medals and cash prizes.