ACCRA, (PNA/Xinhua) — Ghana has begun a program to unearth and develop young athletes to win laurels for the country at future international assignments.
As part of the program, the Ghana Athletics Association (GAA) Friday kick-started a camping session for prospective sprinters they have been tracking over the last few years to fine-tune them for some major competitions next year.
The GAA has accordingly selected 16 potential national athletes and seven coaches and officials for the training camp which will end on December 22 in Accra.
“The athletes were selected based on their performances over the last two years, with the list augmented by prospects from recent competitions,” Bawa Fuseini, General Secretary of the GAA, told Xinhua on Friday.
Ghana is expected to compete in a host of international competitions in 2014, including the African Youth Games, ECOWAS Championships, the World Junior Championships, and the Commonwealth Games.
The GAA undertook a similar exercise in 2012 where both junior and senior athletes were camped for six months ahead of a number of key local and international competitions during which the junior national team won the maiden West Africa Junior Championship in Cote d’Ivoire when Ghana’s 4x400m relay team beat Nigeria to win gold.
Again, 12 junior athletes, for the first time in the athletics history of Ghana, qualified for the 2012 World Junior Athletics Championships in Barcelona, Spain, where sprinter Janet Amponsah placed a respectable fifth in the girls’ 200m final.
Fuseini attributed the successes of the young athletes at these competitions to the long camping which the association undertook prior to the commencement of the events.
He believed the athletes would take the world athletics stage by storm in the coming years. “We believe our programs are good and it will reflect in the accomplishments of these athletes in major international assignments in the coming years,” he said.