Monrovia – The football squad of Cece United Football Academy has been crowned champions of the 2018 edition of Play for Peace annual football tournament.
Cece Football Academy won the championship after their 1-0 triumphed over Play for Peace Academy in a one-day tournament played at the Antoinette Tubman Stadium in Monrovia.
The tournament was organized by former Lone Star midfielder Eddie Kingston in collaboration with One Goal Foundation School and was played among eight teams.
The eight teams are the champions Cece United Academy, Play for Peace Academy, David Suah Foundation, Young Star, Wilson Corner, Monrovia Football Academy, Josephine Clark Academy and Ambassadors.
The newly crowned champions of the tournament Cece United Football Academy, were crowned champions after a 4-1 victory over the tournament defending champions, David Suah Foundation, in the opening game, and whipped Wilson Corner Academy 3-1 in their second match.
Strikers George Nyanton, Emmanuel Koiwu, Alex G. Doe, Hassan Mohammed and Delton Kollie were the scorers of the champions Cece Academy.
The tournament runner-up, Play for Peace, won her first and second games 3-0 and 2-0 against Ambassadors and Young Star and lost to champions Cece United Academy in the final.
Leon Sammy, Mohammed Jalloh and Prince Kollie were the scorers for Play for Peace.
Monrovia Football Academy, Young Star, Josephine Academy and David Suah were the four teams that failed to score a single win out of the three games they played in the tournament.
The founder of Play for Peace Academy Eddie Kingston described the tournament completion as huge success and paid tribute to the champions and the rest of the teams that took part in the competition and others that were fortunate to see for themselves the skills of the future footballers of Liberia.
Each player of the eight schools that took part in the tournament received a bookbag.
Kingston said he considered the completion of the tournament as huge success because it pulled huge crowd up to over 250 students from different background and most of the players that participated in the competition had the chance to play at the ATS for the first time in their football career.
The tournament organizer said the reason for establishing Play for Peace Academy is to help develop the minds of Liberia’s future leaders with both classroom education and football talent.
Kingston voiced that his academy presently has 40 students and that they are all scoring the needed grade points in their classes and they are also progressing in the football arena.
“One of the main goals of my academy is to help our future leaders with classroom education combine with footballing skills. From their classroom grade points and their talents showing against their opponents in this tournament, I can assure you that they are progressing very fast in both the classroom and the training they are undergoing at the academy.”
He acknowledged that the just-ended school tournament is the second but promised to organize an annual football league in February of this year 2019 and it would be played among 24 academy teams. “The league is an annual event but only players between the ages of 12 to 15 years, who are in school will be allowed to take part and because one of our main goals is youth development in both the classroom mixed with football skills. The league will be played in various communities in Monrovia and not in a particular community.