Special Olympics Fiji as part of one of their goals for the 2016-2020 strategic plans to give opportunity to special athletes to participate in variety of sporting competition.

Special Olympics Fiji sports director Robin Dayal said that is why they are organising a special Unified 5-a-side football competition today.

“This is made possible with the partnership received from Fiji Football namely under the Just Play Program where we train our people who are intellectually disabled to come out from their locked doors and enjoy sports with their unified partners,” Dayal said.

The competition will be held at the Fiji Football Academy in Vatuwaqa starting from 9am.

“This is a wonderful opportunity for our Special Athlete footballers to show us their talent in a real football competition. It will also provide opportunity for the female footballers to also showcase their talent.”

Dayal said this year they have trained 20 coaches who attended a two- day training workshop and received Level 1 coaching certificate.

“These were mostly the teachers and parents from the special schools. We have also trained some of our athletes under the athletes leadership programme to become coach’s assistant. We also had team bonding camp shriver held at Rock Army Camp in Nadi.”

Dayal said the competition is their talent identification program which leads- up to International Invitational Games in April 2018.

“This competition will help us identify a training squad from each of the districts to prepare for the above Game in 2018. The Games will be played in both the men’s and women’s division.”

He said the Games will follow the futsal rules- male         from 15 to 19 years and female from 14 to 18 years. Dayal said this would be a good opportunity to expose their highly neglected students to come to a sporting field with their unified partners away from their everyday life.

Special Olympics Fiji

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