GRASSROOTS football organiszer, the Petra Organisation, is set to kick off their year of football activities with the staging of the inaugural competition for Technical Colleges and University teams this month.
The event, which is being sponsored by Modec, is set to capture a segment of the school population previously untouched by football organisers.
As Petra Co-director, Troy Mendonca, told Chronicle Sports, the move is intended to help transition the target population at reference to the next level.
“The tertiary education programme aims to track the players that would have completed high school and in the education pathway and continued their development in the sport and personal development. Back in the day, we had a strong GTI team, and we had players who want to continue playing the sport in the school or university they attend, so we give them that opportunity,” Mendonca said.
The football administrator says the goal is to enable continuity in the sport of football, and bridge the gap between junior and seniors as well as complete their objective of primary to tertiary schools’ football development through competitions.
According to Mendonca, the organisation has received good feedback from the likes of Texila American University among others who sees it (the competition) as a chance for their large student population to get involved in organized sports.
Mendonca added that the announced calendar will allow better planning for the schools that partake in their programs and allow Petra to deliver even higher quality competition to the football fraternity.
“Our experience of our recently completed KFC tournament, [tells us] that starting early gives us a better opportunity to coordinate all the logistics involved and give an early indication to the teams that might be willing to participate in the tournaments, so that they can indicate early and we can come up with a list of teams who show indication that they want to be part of these tournaments and definitely aid in our planning,” he added.
Meanwhile the organization also shared the slew of competitions for the rest of the year.
After the tertiary competition the 11th annual U-18 Massy Secondary School Round Robin/KO Football Tournament is set to run from March 15 to April 19.
The third competition for the year will see the return of the ExxonMobil Boy/ Girls U-14 Football Tournament for its 7th staging from May 2 to June 20.
Following that, the 9th Digicel Nationwide Secondary Schools Football Championship will take place from July 4 to August 15.
The 13th edition is the Courts Optical Pee Wee U-11 Boys Primary School Football Tournament set to run off from September 12 to October 24 with the period of October 18 to November 29 featuring the annual Republic Bank U-18 School Football League.
Then the 10th edition of the MVP Sports Girls U-11 Primary School Football Tournament is set for November 14 to December 5 with the year set to be closed off with its marquee regional tournament, The annual KFC Goodwill International Secondary school U-18 football from December 13 to 20.