NAN-S-17
Tennis
By Dorcas Jonah
Abuja, Feb. 20, 2017 (NAN) Babatunde Abe, an International Tennis coach on Monday said that there was a need to build adequate structures that would produce world class tennis players for the country.
Abe told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja that Nigeria had a lot of talents that needed to be trained to international standard.
According to him, we need to have structures on ground to produce tennis players. I have resolved this year that children U-10, U-12 and U-14 will be my focus.
“We need to get sponsors and draw up good programmes to admit the kids, train them and monitor their progress.
“I am hoping that in the next two to three months, we will have a functional programme.
“We have a lot of talents in Nigeria, but we need structures, facilities and programmes that can get them there.
“These are the pillars that will ensure that we produce world champions,’’ he said.
Abe noted that the major challenge of the project would be having coaches that were not ready to make sacrifices.
“We have capable coaches that can run the project but the problem is that everybody wants to make money. We need to have coaches that can sacrifice.
“If we don’t sacrifice we will not get anywhere because the children we are focusing on are from very poor background,’’ he said.
Abe said that the programme would build the kids in all areas of the game, mental, physical, tactical and technical. (NAN)
DE/PDE
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(Editing by Peter Ejiofor)