TENNIS

A new national tennis championship, the Midwestern Oil & Gas Junior Tennis Championship, has been added to the Nigerian tennis calender with the inaugural event scheduled for May 12 to May 18 at the prestigious Lagos Lawn 

Tennis Club.

The championship which is part of the ITA Junior Tennis Circuit run by the International Tennis Academy

will feature boy's and girls singles events in four age groups - 10s, 12s, 14s and 16s.

Engr Sanni Ndanusa, the president of the Nigeria Tennis Federation has commended Midwestern Oil & Gas for the sponsorship, emphasising that, "the sponsorship will go a long way to consolidate the focus on Junior tennis development as means of laying the right foundation for producing world class players in the future."

The managing director of Midwestern Oil & Gas, Mr Adams Okoene, who was guest of honour at the last CBN Junior

Tennis championship in February said: "We are happy to contribute our quota to the various efforts to engage and empower our youths  and sports is a truly veritable tool to accomplish that."

The tournament has been scheduled to run alongside the CBN Senior National Championship with the Midwestern finals coming up a day after the CBN finals.

Engr Ndanusa who is also the president of the Nigeria Olympic Committee said "both tournaments running side by side

will give the young kids an opportunity to see the standard at the senior level and aspire to attain and surpass that in record time."

Adding, "It is an experiment and we shall like to see the impact on the young boys and girls, some of whom might participate in the preliminaries of the senior event."