Soccer tournament keeps Sunnyside youth active
‘This is our way of keeping our children off the streets. We plan to host similar tournaments and perhaps improve the turnout of supporters and get us sponsors.’
Parents at the Sunnyside Primary School are using soccer as a means to keep young people off the streets.
On 16 June, the parents, who form part of the school committee, organised the inaugural youth soccer tournament at the school’s sports field.
School governing body chairperson Robert Maake told Rekord that the main aim of the tournament was to keep the children busy.
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“As parents, we decided to form a committee where we discuss issues that are our children are faced with. One of the things we identified was that our children needed activities to keep them busy, especially on weekends.”
“Our local team Blue Stars wanted us to do something for Youth Day so we organised the tournament and invited a number of soccer teams around Pretoria to play with us. The idea was to raise funds for Blue Stars because they compete in lower league and need sponsors,” he said.
Maake urged the community to be behind the team and support the project to raise funds.
“This is our way of keeping our children off the streets. We plan to host similar tournaments and perhaps improve the turnout of supporters and get us sponsors.”
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The Blue Stars soccer team has under 11-17 juniors teams with their main team, which competes in lower regional leagues.
Blue Stars soccer team secretary Carlinn Burts encouraged the community to get involved and keep their children active.
“The reason we have these games is to encourage the youth to be active in sport, promote discipline and most important bring the community together to keep our children safe,” she said.
“There’s a lot of drug dealers roaming the streets and if we can keep our children away from them and keep them here (at school) then we’ll uplift this community.”
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