PANAJI: North Goa College Directors of Physical Education reigned supreme at the recently-held basketball tournament for PE professionals working in colleges across Goa.
The tournament was organised by the Department of Physical Education and Sports of St Xavier’s College-Mapusa, St Joseph Vaz College-Cortalim and Nirmala Institute of Education.
In the thrilling final, North Goa College Directors of Physical Education defeated Assistant Professors in Physical Education by a slender margin of 1 point, at St Xavier’s College, Mapusa.
The tournament was played with a lot of enthusiasm and fervour. The opening match was played between Assistant Professors in Physical Education, and Instructors in Physical Education. In a well-contested match, the Assistant Professors prevailed. Roger Fernandes did his best for the Instructors team, but the Assistant Professors with an excellent allround team consisting of Neil, Ryan Pereira, Dr Ajith Gopi, Sachin Parsekar and Gautam Kankonkar were better on the day.
The next match was between North Goa College Directors of Physical Education and South Goa College Directors of Physical Education. Although the South Goa College Directors tried their best they were not able to stop the star-studded team of North Goa Directors having players of the stature of Agnel Dias, Dr Michael Dias, Dr Sam Braganza, Clifton Fernandes and Balachandra Jadar.
The final was the most exciting match. The match played between North Goa College Directors of Physical Education & Sports, and Assistant Professors in Physical Education was a worthy final to witness. The entire match swung one way and the other till the end, and no team could be separated in normal time. In over time, the match got even more exciting with both teams trying to outwit each other. In the end, North Goa College Directors of Physical education won the championship defeating Assistant Professors in Physical education by the narrowest margin of 1 point.
Synora Rodrigues E Picardo, an Instructor in Physical Education at Nirmala Institute of Education, was awarded best female player and Agnel Dias, the outgoing College Director of Physical Education and Sports of Fr Agnel College, was awarded the best male player.
Also, new Instructors in Physical Education were inducted into the ACDOPEG family. Those inducted were Joston Cardoz of Fr Agnel College Pilar, Prashant Fadte of GVM College and Swapnil of Vidya Prabodhini College. The chief guest for the prize distribution was Fr Toni Salema, Administrator of St Xaviers College. In his address, he congratulated all the participants for coming out from their busy schedule to take part in the event. He also appreciated the efforts of the organisers. Fr Toni encouraged everyone to take up more events like this on an even bigger scale. Dr Devashish Bagchi, president of ACDOPEG also addressed the gathering. He highlighted the various activities taken up by ACDOPEG. Clifton Fernandes briefed everyone about the tournament and the idea behind organising an event like this. Joslyn Fernandes proposed the vote of thanks and Dr Elroy Pinto compered the event.
