By Solomon Nwoke, Port Harcourt
ABIA men’s hockey tean failed to live up to expectations when it mattered most as they bowed 0-4 to their Ondo counterparts thereby giving an edge for Ondo to mount pressure on the defending champions Yobe in the on going 17th National Sports Festival.

The three teams are in Pool B of the competition and Yobe had on Thursday beaten  Abia 2-0. Both Yobe and Ondo met in a battle for group supremacy weekend, after their victories over Abia had helped them into the quarter-finals of the competition.

In other men’s competition results, Bauchi and Ogun drew 0-0 in a Pool C match, thus handing the advantage to Niger which had a day earlier beaten Bauchi 2-0.In Pool D, Katsina beat Nasarawa 1-0 but both teams are advancing to the next round as they are the only teams in the pool.   Rivers had on Thursday beaten Kebbi 8-0 in Pool A which also has Edo.

Eleven teams are in the competition and they have been pooled into four.<BR>In the women’s competition, Benue, which drew 1-1 with Kaduna on Thursday in a Pool B match, again drew goalless with Ondo on Friday. In Pool C, Imo beat Bauchi 1-0 on Friday, after losing 0-1 to Yobe a day earlier

The women’s competition has nine teams tking part, and they are in three pools of three teams each.Judo coach frowns at festival’s MOC NATIONAL Coach, Judo Federation of Nigeria (JFN), Hon Bashir Musa Bassey, has frowned at the decision of the Main Organizing Committee (MOC) of the on-going <BR>17th National Sports Festival to scrap the junior and intermediate judokas at the festival.

Hon Bassey bared his mind during one of the judo events at the Alfred Diette-Spiff sports Complex venue, said that the decision made by the MOC would retard the growth of the sport in the country. He said that sports would only retrogress, rather than progress in the nation, especially in Judo, with the new development.

Hon Bassey, who is also the executive board member, African Judo Union and Director, Judo Education and Coaches Commission in Africa, maintained that the Sport Festival was where talents were discovered and groomed ahead of other national and international engagements.“With this development, the nation’s Judo will collapse, as the excitement and prospects often associated with the junior and intermediate categories will also be sorely missed”, he said.

He further explained that most of the senior judokas that were participating in the fiesta started from the grassroots and said that the standard of judo at the Garden City Games was very poor, Continuing, he said, “should the senior pass their prime, there would be no one to replace them, in the history of the NSF, this is the first to exclude the junior and intermediate judokas from participation”.C/River targets eight gold medals in wrestling.

Coach of the Cross River State wrestling association, Oku Effiong has declared  that the target of the state in the wrestling event of the Garden City Games is to go home with eight gold medals

Effiong who came with a total of 18 wrestlers made up of seven female and 11 male wrestlers boasted that they had splendid training at home before the festival. .We have so many prospects here and we are sure of five gold medals in the male category and three in the female class”, the coach .Effiong said that he has female wrestlers contesting in the freestyle category in the 48kg, 51kg, 55kg, 59kg, 62kg and 72kg. According to him, the male wrestlers will participate in 55kg, 60kg, 66kg, 74kg, 84kg, 96kg and 120kg in both the freestyle and Greco-Roman categories.

“Our optimism is based on past performances of the team. We are also confident that we will reach the finals,” he said.