Saboba (Northern Region) 29th June 99 -

Yendi Secondary School made a clean sweep of the prizes at stake when they won the seventh Northern region Inter-Secondary School zone six sports festival at Saboba in the Saboba-Chereponi district at the weekend.

The school came first in both the boys and girls divisions, setting new records in the 200 metres, 400 metres and the triple jump events.

They won in athletics, soccer and table tennis, bagging 164 points. Dagbon State Secondary-Technical came second with 82 points, while Saboba St. Joseph's Technical Institute placed third with 79 points.

Other placing were: Gushegu Secondary school, 61 points, Zabzugu Secondary School, 48 points and Chereponi Secondary School, eight and a half points.

In the girls division, Yendi Secondary won with 122 points, followed by Saboba E.P. Secondary School with 103 points, Dagbon State Secondary-Technical School with 52 points.

The others were Saboba St. Joseph's Technical Institute were sixth with 31 points, Zabzugu Secondary School, seventh with 20 points and Chereponi Secondary eighth with 17 points.

In the 200 metres event, Issahaku Sampson of Yendi Secondary School set a new record of 22.19 seconds to break the old record of 23.4 seconds set by John Parabi also of Yendi Secondary School in 1997.

Sampson again set a record in the 400 metres with a time of 51.22 seconds to break the old record of 53.08 seconds set by Abass Hakeem of the same school in 1995, while in the triple jump Wumbei M. Ali, set a record of

11.65 metres to break the old record of 11.40 seconds set by Abass of Yendi in 1996.

In the soccer division, Yendi Secondary School beat Zabzugu Secondary school 2-0 in the finals.

In his closing address, the Gushegu-Karaga District Chief Executive, Mr Alhassan Yakubu said the competition has afforded the zone an opportunity to select promising athletes to represent it at the super-zonal competition scheduled to take place in Yendi next month.

He said the outcome of the competition is of national interest as the zone recently emerged from the ethnic conflict and that every body was anxious to see if it could organise such programmes without resorting to violence.

Mr Yakubu said the success of the games has therefore demonstrated to the rest of the country that there is now peace in the region and asked investors and other workers not to shy away from it.

GRi?/