HENRY Chase, headmaster and owner of Chase Academy, one of Georgetown’s leading private learning institutions, will be offering four full scholarships to the top players from the 3rd Petra/Milo U-20 Football tournament which was launched yesterday.

“I’m a football fan, following the game for a long time and over the years I’ve always had the view that, in my lifetime, I would love to see Guyana go to the football World Cup.
“I realise that our young men out there are very talented and they are many football players in Guyana who are cognitively inclined,” Chase said while addressing the media at the tournament’s launching.
Chase said that last year, nine scholarships were given to students from the aforementioned tournament, which comes with his aim to further “allow students who are not performing in the traditional public school system, to come to Chase where continuously, they will continue to train in the afternoon with the hope of doing many things of developing rounded individual or preparing young people who could represent Guyana (at the various levels)”
The students are not expected to pay any tuition fees, according to Chase. “They come to school, they must maintain discipline, and they must attend school and should not be involved in any negativity.
“I must admit also that our valedictorian last year is a member of our football team and he got 11 subjects. We have this perception that footballers generally do perform, they don’t see school as important and I’m trying to reverse that backward mentality.”
Digicel’s schools football tournament is considered the Holy Grail of schools football championships but, from its inception four years ago, only once a city team (Government Technical Institute) won the title.
Christianburg Wismar Secondary School (CWSS) featured in all four finals, only losing once and won three consecutive championships; something Chase said that he’s wary of, stating “I’m at pain each year to see Christianburg just winning the Digicel all the time and I will do everything in my power so that we can compete.”
He said that offering the scholarship to the top performers will also enhance his school’s chances of being the top football school in the country.
Meanwhile, Chase received high praise from Chief Education Officer (CEO) Olato Sam who said that he welcomes the private school’s intuition at helping the education system through sports and hopes that others could follow in their (Chase Academy) footsteps.
“One of our weakness, for example, the Inter-Guiana Games (IGG), is fielding the most talented team because that has some academic requirement attached to it. Our programmes at all levels will only move forward if we only get some of these fundamental things right,” Sam said.
Thirty-two schools from Georgetown will contest this year’s Petra/Milo U-20 football tournament with the winning team collecting $500 000 towards a project of their school’s choice.

(By Rawle Toney)