UPSSA president hails Vision Group

The curtains on the Uganda Primary Schools Sports Association (UPSSA) 2024 calendar closed last week with the national ball games hosted at Pioneer Primary School in Soroti City.

The championship was the fourth and last on both the national and regional UPSSA calendar after the kids athletics in Kitgum, the FEASSA qualifiers in Mukono, and the FEASSA championship in Bukedea where Uganda emerged overall winners with 9 gold, beating Kenya, Tanzania, and Rwanda.

UPSSA president William Bwambale, on top of listing the achievements, hailed Vision Group for a dedicated service to the nation through sports, especially with local sports and specifically having given the primary games space on the group platforms New Vision, Bukedde TV, new vision website and TV West.

“We as UPSSA are grateful to Vision Group because of having moved with us throughout this year’s national championship. Before we would be at games without seeing mention of what is happening with the kids’ talents exhibitions in the media but this time round, we have been on your televisions and papers and your online publications, we surely can not thank you enough,” Bwambale said.

To Bwambale, the Soroti championship was the most successful and showed more positives in the primary school championship when it came to turn-up, coordination, security, media, and government involvement.

“We had never witnessed big numbers and turn up of both local governments’ teams and athletes’ numbers than we witnessed in Soroti. This shows that people have started looking at what we are doing and they are appreciating it. We also have to thank the government for funding these local governments so they can bring athletes to the national championships,” he said.

The competition which sees athletes’ teams compete under local governments of districts, cities, and municipalities, attracted 153 local governments out of the 177 in the country with 6142 athletes and 1500 officials, the biggest numbers that the championship has ever produced in history.

These were competing in boys' and girls’ netball, volleyball, handball, and football and special needs with the U12 and U14 age categories.

However, the successes of Bwambale still highlighted the challenges ranging from limited funding and continued usage of ineligible players.

“We thank the government for the little that we receive because it comes on time, but we would request since this is the grassroots of sports development, the government looks at increasing the funding to primary sports because the little does not allow us to divide the championship into two to ease the challenge of overwhelming numbers at one championship,” Bwambale laments.

Sironko, Masaka, Nabiratuk, Njeru, Madi Okolo, Soroti City, Nansana, Wakiso, Kyotera, Makindye, and KCCA emerged winners of different categories with Kyotera and Nansana winning two titles each.