Prempeh today placed second in this year's Ashanti Regional
Super-Zonals Athletics competition held at the Kumasi Sports Stadium on March 15 and 16.
While our school was busily hosting the Ashanti Regional Maths Quiz and preparing to send off our Quiz
contestants to Cape Coast for a trial tour, the other schools had petitioned to
have the Super-Zonals held earlier than pre-arranged. The event was originally scheduled
to be held on April 15 and 16, 2004 but some schools wanted it held earlier because of final exams
of the second term which occurs around the same time in April.
So Prempeh went in unprepared for this impromptu event and we lost: OWASS first with 166 points, Prempeh second with 105.2 points,
and Kumasi High 3rd. This is not the first time that such poor foresight on the part of organizers has been a problem. While we are not making
any excuses for our defeat, it is not fair for Prempeh to return to the stadium for Super-Zonals right after finishing their zone, when
the other already SuperZo-qualified schools have been home resting for months. First, our zone, which is the last (Zone D) had to be postponed
because the Sports Council scheduled our competition at a time when some of the competing schools were on midterms - talk about poor planning!
Then when we finally completed it and won, they set up the SuperZo without actually checking with the school's academic calendar.
Schools were then recalled to come to the stadium and compete right away instead of having the normal one month break
between the end of Zone 4 and the SuperZo because the April 15 schedule coincides with exams. How could Prempeh compete on March 8th and 9th and be called to compete in the Super-Zo finals one week later?
What kind of training could we undergo in that short time? Meanwhile OWASS boys have had months worth of rest and intensive training. This begs the question: "Is there anything
that is well-organized in modern day Ghana?"
It is because of this usually poor planning by the Sports Council that we could not get our systems
in place for a live coverage. Besides, when we saw how things were proceeding, we were so distressed to even mention it here.
But that is okay, because this is the first trophy we have failed to win in the year 2004. What was most tear-jerking was the 60-point
difference between us and the beneficiaries of our fatigue.
