The president of the Gambia Secondary School Sport Association GSSSA, Mr. Martin Gomez, has told the winners of the 2008/09 GSSSA athletic competition that sports is not an impediment to education. Mr. Gomez made these remarks recently at the Gambia National Olympic House during the presentation of prizes to the winners of the 2008/09 athletic sports meeting held at the Independence Stadium in Bakau two weeks ago. He described his association’s competition as a national issue and that schools need to undertake sports seriously, adding that sports should be high on our agenda. Mr. Gomez said it was not easy to organize such a competition but with the co-operation of his Executive members they were able to host the 2008/09 athletic meeting successfully. According to Mr. Gomez, volleyball is more popular in schools than basketball and called on his colleagues at the school level to do more in order to encourage their athletes in the area of basketball. He finally thanked Trust Bank Ltd for sponsoring the 2008/09 GSSSA athletic competition and DOSBSE for providing his association with an amount of D100,000 towards the competition.

For his part Mr. Momodou Sey, deputizing for Mr. Dodou Nyang, Marketing and Sales Manager Trust Bank Ltd, said Trust Bank will remain committed to promote sports at the grassroots level adding that the presentation of this kind comes to recognize schools for their outstanding performance in this year’s inter secondary school sports competition. Mr. Sey told the winning school athletes and he announced that new trophies were bought in the four disciplines namely athletic, basket ball, volleyball and football. He disclosed that during the competition D10,750.00 was disbursed to the winners of the 43 events, in total Trust Bank catered for more than D200,000.00 for this year competition which was no doubt showing his institution commitment in promoting sports.

As winners GSSS received a trophy and a check amounting to D10,000 whilst Saint Augustine / Saint Joseph SSS received D6,000.00 check as runners-up. In the Upper Basic level SukutaUpperBasicSchool were crowned champions and received D8,000.00 check and a trophy while GunjurUpperBasicSchool came out second and received also a check amounting to D5,000.00. The ceremony was chaired by the secretary general of the GSSSA Mr. Alhagie S. Darboe and vote of thanked was delivered by Jainaba Nyang of Saint Joseph Senior Secondary School.