THE 12th Edition of the Courts Optical Pee Wee Schools Football Tournament was on Friday launched at Courts Maga Store at Main Street in Georgetown.
This is the flagship programme of the Petra Organisation will run from September 20th to December 1st 2025.
The competition will feature 40 teams with 17 drawn from Georgetown, four from the East Coast of Demerara, four from region three and two teams each from regions 10, seven, six, five and two.
Also set to compete will be 2 teams from East Bank and Santa Rosa primary the defending champions, the only team out of region 1.
The competition begins with elimination round featuring all 40 teams with 32 advancing to the tournament proper.
The 32 sides will then be placed in eight groups of four and will compete in a round robin format with the top two team advancing to the round of sixteen.
The round of sixteen is a straight knock-out format, leading to the quarter final, semi-final and final.
Co-Director of Petra Organisation Troy Mendonca says the Pee Wee competition was key to the organisation’s formation which in turn has led to development of youth footballers.
“Without this tournament, there won’t have been a Petra Organisation. We know the impact on players going onto represent our country, we were able to create leaders in their own rights among a lot of youngsters that came through this programme,” he added.
Richard Simpson, Courts Optical Chain Manager says the company is elated to stand with the Petra Organisation and support the grass root competition for the 12th year.
“Courts Optical the brand has grown over the years. Our mission is to remain rooted and to give back to the community. Courts Unicomer itself will celebrate 32 years in Guyana going strong and of those 32 years, we would have given 12 to Pee Wee Football and I think it’s a lank mark….and Courts’ key focus is how do we develop the youths of Guyana, how do we develop the community and how do look for a brighter future for the kids,” Simpson said.
Nicholas Fraser, Head of the Unit of Allied Arts at the Ministry of Educations said the competition serves a purpose in molding youths.
“The competition itself has done quite a bit; we can talk about the development of soft skills, which is very important….these are things we develop easy in football, and it not something that you can teach on a black board, so we understand the importance of these competitions and what it does to teach our pupils these very important soft skills.”
He also alluded to the fact that competition serves to galvanize schools, adding, “We have seen schools develop around this competition, a programme within their schools simply because they want to be the best or better than the other schools within their region and so as a spin off, we have seen reaching out and trying to see how they can better their programme.”
Assistant Director of Sports Melissa Dow-Richardson says the Ministry of Culture Youth and Sports endorses the programme.
“There has been a mass proliferation of sports across three dozen disciplines in this country, we have sports associations and federations that are working and we have community sports active and a really important pillar is the sports in schools’ initiative. So, there are activities in schools in all 10 regions across gender, race and demographic lines and for the sports commission and the Ministry [of Sport] that means we are doing our part,” Dow-Richardson added.
Apart from the teams to advance, the remaining teams will play for placement,
This, the organiser says is key because of the developmental drive of the competition and the need to have players play as much as possible.
The games will be played at the Ministry of Education ground with awards for the top eight places which include trophies, medals, television, tablets etc.
There are also individual prizes for highest goal scorer, most valuable player, best goal keeper and most disciplined school.