The Cenwest zone swept the men’s and women’s table tennis team championships at the ongoing 11th Colleges of Education Sports Association (COESA) held at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi.
In a best-of-5-set competition or swaythling format, the Central-Western team won the men’s event with 8 points, followed by the Volta zone with seven points while host zone Ashba (Ashanti-Brong Ahafo) settled for third with six points. EGA (Eastern-Greater Accra) zone and the Northern zone followed sumit with 5 and 4 points respectively.
Star player and the best male player Bernard Ofori led the Cenwest team to win three games against their opponents by identical 3:0 wins, before securing a 3:2 victory in their last game.
Meanwhile, the women’s division witnessed a much tougher competition among the five contesting zones. The event ended with Cenwest, Ashba and Volta locked on 7 points each and were only separated using match rations per ITTF regulations before Cenwest were declared the winner. Ashba came second while Volta placed third. North followed in 4th and were followed in 5th place by EGA. Promising, Esher Nyantakyiwa, was named as the best female player of the three-day event.
The table tennis event was coordinated by Francis Frimpong, an experienced International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) technical official with vast experience in African-level competition, Olympic Games, and Commonwealth Games.
Meanwhile, the netball and handball championships recorded some fascinating results on day three of the games. Cenwest defeated Volta 26:22 while host Ashba thumped Northern zone 52:8. In the women’s handball contest, Cenwest recorded a 30:16 triumph over Ashba.
The 5-competing zones at the 11th COESA Games are the Ashanti-Brong Ahafo zone (ASHBA), Eastern-Greater Accra (EGA) zone, Central-Western (CENWEST) zone, Volta zone, and Northern zone. The event is themed; Unearthing sports talents in the midst of pandemic: the role of Colleges of Education. About 900 male/female athletes drawn from the 5-zones of colleges of education are participating in the event which ends on Saturday.
