#56: National Sport Festival
Hi Hivians 😊!
Happy weekend to you. I hope you are all enjoying yourself. For me, I really have a good time here. Today, I was opportuned to witness the national sport festival qualification match, which was held in my state.
My country, Nigeria has six geopolitical zones which are: North Central (NC), North East (NE), North West (NW), South West (SW), South East (SE) and South South (SS). Each zone is preparing for the national sport festival in their respective zonal points. This qualification match is aimed at selecting the best players from different states in a particular zone which will represent their zone for the upcoming sport festival that will be held at Delta state of Nigeria. I was fortunate that the South South (SS) zonal qualification match was held in my state.
The different sports varieties include: basketball, volleyball, handball, hockey, football, baseball and other team sports. Individual sports like: race, swimming, javelin etc didn't have a qualification match. As such,each state will give a representative for individual sports.
I was so interested in the basketball, volleyball and handball games. So, today being the opening ceremony of the qualification match, I joined other spectators to watch a basketball game that was between Cross River and Bayelsa State.
The match was kick-started by 2pm but before then, the players were really involved in training. Different stunts were done during the training, these triggered my eagerness to see what they have to offer on the pitch.
The whistle was blown to call them to order. After all the formalities in opening ceremonies, the match began! These players wore a curious look.
From the pictures, the Cross River team wore a white jersey while their opponent, the Bayelsa team, wore the navy blue jersey. With all knees bent and the raucous tussle for the innocent maltreated basketball, every player was at his place.
With the virility of the Cross River team, I envisaged that they were going to win.
I got a beep call on my phone and BOOM! That was the basketball net that gulped that hard swallow. That was really terrific and the whole crowd gave them a rowdy standing ovation.
There was really no time to waste as every player was eyeing his opponent's net. I felt like the continuous bouncing of the ball was about to sink all fans to Hades! I saw this stallion of a player, bouncing this Ball with so much finesse and before I could even say Jack Robinson, the Young Man gave the net another swallow from a fairly far distance. The noise in the crowd was earsplitting as all Cross River fans danced for victory. These numerous points were pretty cool. Seeing that the Bayelsa team had just a point gave me the conviction that the Cross River team had to put sentiment into serious business.
At the expected time the wonderful game came to an end and it was followed by the Handball game which I couldn't stay behind to watch, as it was dusk already.
But coming to remember the remarkable Basketball match, it is obvious that my geopolitical zone is synonymous to nothing but EXCELLENCE!
NOTE: All pictures were originally captured and edited by me.