The Minister of Youth and Sports Development, Mr Sunday Dare, has revealed the Ministry’s plans towards using open trials at National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) orientation camps to discover athletes that can compete in continental and global sports events.
Mr Dare made the disclosure while fielding questions from newsmen after his visit to the NYSC Orientation Camp in Keffi, Nassarawa State for the ongoing Batch C – Stream One orientation.
He explained that “This is a newly designed open trial for our youth corps members. We are working out the final details, which is why I brought Mary Onyali, we believe that perhaps, some of the sportsmen and women who are in camp today were too busy trying to read to pass their courses, and get a degree. Most of them now are in camp and are a bit more relaxed, we can give them an opportunity to exhibit the talents they have and even if this camp only produces a single talent, we would have succeeded in trying to groom new talents for this country.”
“So, it’s going to happen as open trials at all the camps across the country and once we have the talents we bring them together for another trial, and from there, we can send them to the federations who would develop them and present them to the Ministry for championships and competitions”, Mr. Dare added.
On the incentives for the athletes who will be discovered at the open trials, he said, “you know that we have the adoption campaign which is going to be launched very soon. It is a national adoption campaign for sports facilities but also, we have the ‘Adopt an Athlete’ campaign. Once we find a few of our talented athletes in this camp and other camps across the country, we will plug them into our Adopt an Athlete campaign and once you are adopted as an athlete, you will be supported for training, kitting and a few others things you need. It is a program that we think will excite so many budding talents that are here and I hope the youth corps members will take advantage of that, then we can grow a new tribe of sportsmen and women for the country”.
