Yebo Sanga, the winner of the 2017/18 Malawi Sports awards’ Junior Sports Person of the Year, will represent the country at this year’s African Chess Schools individual tournament in South Africa from June 23 to July 2 and he garnered some confidence by winning the schools’ Under-12 boys category of the regional qualifiers of the Presidential Initiative in Sport (PIS) successfully held at St. Patrick’s Academy last weekend.
Yebo Sanga, the Junior Sports Person of the Year
Sanga has ably represented the country and thus earned the top junior category of the Malawi Sports awards organised by Malawi National Council of Sports in March.
The 12-year-old St. Columbus Primary School Standard 8 student, will still have to shine ahead of the national finals to be held on May 26th at Blantyre Youth Centre in Blantyre.
His travel expenses are being sponsored by his parents and according to Chess Association of Malawi (Chessam) schools coordinator Margaret Ngugama they may have more players joining him since other parents are yet to confirm.
Ngugama said the PIS qualifiers exposed some high level of competition in which 118 students took part f3om 20 schools.
“The tournament was played in six distinct categories, Under 12, 16 and open for both female and male players,” she said. “The Under 16 category had the highest number of participants, 38 boys and 28 girls. It is good to note the increase in number of female players.
“All players had a fair share in 5 rounds for each category except the girls Under 12 which played 7. Ten players have been identified from each of the categories. These will compete with players from the Centre and North in the finals which will be held on 26th May 2018 at Blantyre Youth Centre.
“PIS is a programme which aims at development of various sporting disciplines from the grassroot level. In addition, PIS will be used for national team selection for Zone 4.3 Games which will be held in December here in Malawi.
Zone 4.3 has 14 countries, Mauritius, Madagascar, Comoros, RSA, Botswana, Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Eswatini (formely Swaziland), Mozambique, Namibia, DRC and Malawi.
