Story: Yaw Pee Yaw & Isa Ali
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Most Government assisted Senior High Schools in Ghana lack good sports facilities and kits; a study by Interco.Kom shows. Has anyone taken a wild guess as to why our local sportsmen and women excel when they travel to Western schools and clubs? Good facilities. In fact, excellent facilities. Most Western schools have their own highly equipped mini sports facilities that make sports attractive to the students.
Back home, Ghana, our motherland, several schools lack basic sports kits such as spikes for athletes, and soccer boots and jerseys. Majority also do not have standard pitches to train on. Improvised long, triple and high jump arenas are an eyesore while bamboo is used as the high jump posts and goal posts. Some schools do not even have volleyball nets, and surely some also do not have balls.
Another worst spectacle is the tracks on the uneven pitches in these schools. In some schools, the tracks need to cross roads; and bushes need to be cleared in some instances before tracks are cut. This leaves athletes to the mercy of stumps and sharp wood.
There are even instances where athletes are reported to have stepped on snakes or reptiles while running.
Your guess might be closer to right if you imagine what some schools use for javelin. And we expect them to do magic when they handle the real equipment, for the first time, on the day of the competition?
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Students who volunteer to help their schools participate in local, zonal and regional games need to mostly provide their own kits and sometimes water after training. In many instances, sport masters and mistresses have taken the burden upon theemselves to help their schools participate in such compettitions.
In other instances, sports masters and mistresses virtually 'fight' their Heads of institution to release funds for sports. And many sports masters/mistresses and sports-enthused teachers have been transferred for 'fighting' their Heads of institutions over sports funds.
For some students, their first time of seeing tartan tracks is the D-day for interco. Deprived of spikes, their soles are cooked by the melting tracks which affects their performance. Those that are provided with spikes for the first time run in them like zombies in a horror movie. No wonder some parents threaten their kids not to do any sports in school!
No wonder small schools and schools that are far away from well equipped sports facilities, and, thus, cannot train on the tracks, perform poorly during the Inter school games. So, do not blame athletes from smaller schools when they flop at the Interco. They would not have participated. But, some are forced or begged to help their schools. In the end, the country wastes many good talents in the schools.
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Senior High Schools in Ghana could have been the breeding grounds for budding athletes and the training grounds for promising future stars. But, the oposite is the case. If an academically poor but sports-enthused youngster do not get a school with good sports facilities that can enhance their performance, then the end of the road to a successful future seems near and the prospects for a future sports star become bleak.
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There are still some second cycle institutions that do not have their personal sports pitches. They compete with communal people for the only pitch in their communities which sometimes bring clashes between the students and the community folks. Imagine a school's soccer team needed to forfeit training for the weekend because the community was having a funeral, and the pitch serves as the funeral grounds also in that community!
Until government, old students, communities in which schools are located, or philanthropists come to the aid of many senior high schools in Ghana, sports development will still be testicle-squeezing; and the only thing we can do is to keep hope alive that God will bless our homeland Ghana, and make sports attractive to the youth.
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