39th Annual Inter-School Athletics Championships - June 18 to host championship for the first time |13 June 2015

Thursday June 18, 2015 is a date that Seychelles shall remember as it will go down in history as the first time the Inter-School Athletics Championships will take place on that date.

Only once in the previous 38 times the championship has been held, has it taken place on another date instead of the usual June 29. That was back in 2006, when the championship was held on June 24.

This year’s change will be very different however, as it is not just a temporary fix, but rather a permanent one after the government decided to change the National Day from June 18 to June 29, which is also the date the country gained its Independence.

Speaking to Sports Nation, the Physical Education and Co-curriculum Support Section director at the Ministry of Education, Wilfred Adrien, said that the change of date has gone smoothly and that everything is well prepared, with only a few slight finishing touches remaining.

Mr Adrien added that there will not be any big changes to this year’s competition, which will see the return of the Spectators trophy, which will be awarded to the school with the best supporters.

The rest of the event will remain the same when the action kicks off at Stad Linite as from 10am next Thursday. The female and male competitors will compete in 96 track & field as well as field events in the under-8, under-10, under-12, under-14, under-16, under-18 and open categories to earn points – 9 points (first place), 7 points (second place), 6 points (third place), 5 points (fourth place), 4 points (fifth place), 3 points (sixth place), 2 points (seventh place) and 1 point (eighth place).
Record breakers will be given two bonus points which will add up to the schools’ total.

A key issue that has plagued the competition in the last two years has been faults in the tallying of points, where some trophies had to be returned as it was given to the wrong schools.
“This time we will have to ensure that everyone does the work well to avoid such issues and I am confident that things will be better this time,” said Mr Adrien.

Last year’s winners were La Digue in the overall primary category, while Anse Royale won the secondary category for a second successive year and as for the open category it was the Seychelles Institute of Technology (SIT) who won the overall trophy.
The championship also produced 17 new records, which the atlhletes will be hoping to topple this time around.