POSTED BY: Eurobasket Center
In October, the Palau National Olympic Comittee Sports Outreach program was cunducted in the shores of the northern most state of Palau. Kayangel state is an isolated island from the big island of Babeldaob. This program was made to allow the Kayangel citizen to discover a couple of sports including basketball.
Source: Palau Basketball Federation
The local program coordinator and a baslketball development officer along with Jubilee Kuartei (All Sports Development Officer), Jemmy Watanabe (Table Tennis SDO), Pioria Koshiba (Track and Field SDO) and 4 other volunteers conducted a 6 sport competitions for the state. Through solidarity funding from PNOC and donations from the different Oceania sports confederations they were able to conduct the games with new and used equipments. In the end all equipments were donated to the elementary school and the youth organization. The youth teams basketbal games was the favorite among all sports as the games were competative and drew big cheers from all the citizens who came to watch the games, some players were barefooted and playing in the hot cement outdoor court, they even got scrapes, cuts from the game but yet they still gave their best. These were ordinary farmers and fishermens who didnt even have shoes. In Kayangel you dont need shoes because its all sand everywhere. The Governor of the state also played inthe games and in the end helped with the closing ceremony in giving away the prices. He also closed the program with a speech thanking his people for their outmost participation and their hospitality, but most importantly he thanked PNOC and all the sponsors for taking the initiative to help the citizens of his state learn new things while enjoying organized but fun sports competitions. Basketball, Volleyball, Tennis, Table Tennis, Swimming and Track and Field were the sports played in the two days. Another important program we included was the Walk and Pick marathon conducted in the early morning hours of Saturday. The teams with the most trash won points for their teams and in the end all points from the different sports were tallied up to see who became the overall champions of the the whole program.
