Students to officiate games as USSSA capacity building climax

By Emmanuel Sekago

We all know learning will never stop and the Uganda Secondary Schools Sports Association (USSSA)  is one one of the sports bodies in Uganda that has continued with their obligation of educating teachers and their students.

The  January one week capacity building  held at three different education centers in Kampala, Mbale and Gulu climaxed today morning with the closing ceremony at Kibuli secondary school, the host school in Kampala center.

Like it was in the December capacity buildings, teachers, including sports teachers and students acquired knowledge of coaching, and refereeing/umpiring  in the following disciplines; Football, Netball, Volleyball, basketball, Athletics, and handball, the other knowledge acquired was from Media and first Aid.

Over 500 participants took part in the above disciplines at three different centres, that’s; Sacred Heart Secondary School in Gulu, Mbale Secondary school  in Mbale and Kibuli secondary school  in Kampala.

At the closing ceremony  held at Kibuli secondary school on Friday, January 19th 2024, the assistant commissioner of Sports in Ministry of Education and Sports,  Sammy Odongo,who represented the permanent secretary as  the guest of honor, thanked USSSA for holding these capacity building trainings and asked the participants to implement what they have studied.

“I wish to thank all schools, all Local governments which sent teachers, sports teachers and students to these training camps to benefit from these capacity building trainings by USSSA which has worked closely with the national federations and sports  to undertake this program.” said Odongo

“I hope when you all  go back to your  communities and various schools, you will be able to implement what was  taught here in order for the government to achieve talent Identification and development. During my speech I emphasized the need for teachers to provide co-curricular education to the students and I also emphasized the need for all education institutions to have enough programs and facilities to teach physical education and sports in their institutions.” he added.

USSSA president, Justus Mugisha emphasized that starting this year 2024, the students who have taken part in the capacity building training, shall be the ones to officiate the games at district, zonal and regional levels.

He said  that they are taking level one Education back to districts and zones, then the level two which started this January will be at national level.

“USSSA  games at district and  zones, will be officiated by our trained  students themselves, we have also put in the rules of this year-2024, for every team for example, football were we have been inviting 20 players from each school but this time will be 23 because there will be a Media person, assistant coach and a referee who are students who studied these courses.”  said Mugisha.

“Last year (2023)  we set a target of training 5000 teachers, sports teachers and students but by the end of the year December, we hit the target of 7000, this year (2024) we have set a target of 30000 and we also decided that level one will now be at districts and zones level and we  are going to make sure  that we empower our districts  zones  to have these courses but the facilitators will be facilitated by USSSA at national level,”  he added.

However this starting year 2024, Kibuli secondary school  centre contributed the biggest number of participants  with a total of 251, the Gulu center had only 166 and  Mbale had 52 making an overall total of 469 participants.

Meanwhile, the January training turn up was low compared with that of December -2023 which had 563. However, Mugisha stated  that the high costs are some of the challenges but with the idea of taking the workshops to district level, the turn up will increase since the costs will also be low.