Province to revive athletics championships

By LARRY ANDREW
MOROBE is set to revive its provincial amateur athletics championships when the event takes place at Wawin National High School from Nov 20-22.
The event, expected to attract more than 500 participants from throughout the province, is considered a pathway for young, aspiring athletes of Morobe.
Morobe has produce some of the country’s athletes, including Allan Akia (current national coach), Sau Wai, Angela Way, Monica Jonathan and Helen Philemon.
Papua New Guinea track athlete Leonie Beu came through the 2014 programme for Team Morobe.
Provincial sports officer Ludwig Peka said: “The (Morobe administration’s sports and culture) division now recognises the importance of athletics. “In our evaluation of the 2014 and 2017 Papua New Guinea Games, we realised that Morobe had not done well in field and track events.
“We’ve done well in sprints but we need to identify more potential long-distance runners as we did not win enough medals at the last two PNG Games.
“The majority of medals come from athletics alone.
“So our focus is to revive athletics and develop potential athletes in the code.”
Peka said the other purpose of the revival was to establish a provincial athletics association, which they already had executives in place to run.
“The executives will continue to run development programmes, training, carnival and championships,” he said.
“The sports and culture division will only oversee administration and technical support to make sure that the association is intact and serving its purpose.
“The championships will allow students to come together and showcase their talents.
“From there, our athletics development officer will identify potential athletes and take them into a development camp next year.”