Lagos State Volleyball Association to extend clinic centres to Epe, Badagry

The Lagos State Assistant Volleyball Coach, Christopher Amata, on Monday said the association would extend clinic centres to Badagry and Epe as part of its planned talents discovery at the grassroots.

The association runs weekends coaching clinics at the Teslim Balogun Stadium, Surulere, Jackpot University of Lagos (UNILAG) Sports Centre, Akoka, and Ikorodu.

Amata told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) that the association was working on developing a junior volleyball league.

He said that the league was scheduled to commence this year with over 200 estimated participants to be drawn from students aged five to 17.

We now have over 200 students playing volleyball in Lagos State now from the five to 17 years, this year we want to extend our clinic centres to other areas.

We have only three clinic centres, UNILAG, Livesport Teslim Balogun and Ikorodu.

With the success recorded in our three centres, we want to extend the centre to Epe and Badagry to enable us have a solid league from these zones.

This will give us a big pool of players by the time we commence the junior volleyball league,’’ Amata said.

The coach lauded the junior volleyball players for their performance at the recent Nigeria Customs Championships held in Kaduna.

“We just came back from Nigeria Customs Championships in Kaduna and it was very interesting that Lagos State teams played some strong teams like the army, police and other junior teams.

“The spectators were impressed with the brilliant performance of the junior players because of their skilful display.

“We look forward to developing them further with a junior volleyball league,’’ Virtual Amata said.

He said that the current development of volleyball at the junior level is attracting international attention.

The junior volleyball league will start this year; we have a coach in the U.S. who is ready to sponsor the league.

The coach, Ibrahim Suberu, is an ex-Lagos State player but he has been coaching in the U.S. for over 10 years.

When he saw the children, he was impressed and decided to invest in them. In one of his visit to Nigeria, online sports betting he brought some sports equipment for the children.

There was even a player based in Spain, John Osiro, who saw the Lagos State sports development program on internet, and brought some equipment to support our Samaritan Volleyball program,’’ Amata said.

The coach said that they were in the process of preparing for the All School Sports Festival scheduled for Abuja.

He said the state was currently preparing for the school sports, sport betting in nigeria and called on the government to give scholarship to indigent but talented athletes.