(MENAFN- Gulf Times) The finals of the 8th edition of the Schools Olympic Program (SOP) will take place from March 18 to 20, 2015, with more students than ever before participating this year. Hundreds of students from 221 schools across Doha will compete in the finals of 14 sporting disciplines.
The tennis finals are scheduled for today at the state-of-the-art Khalifa International Tennis and Squash Complex, which recently hosted the World Schools Tennis Championships and the WTA Qatar Open, while the other finals will be hosted at the Aspire Dome.
The finals for best female student athletes in Qatar will be held on March 19 and the finals for the male students will be held the next day. The events will be open to the public.
The Qatar Olympic Committee (QOC) is encouraging everyone to come down and show their support for these talented young athletes. The sporting action on March 20 will kick off at 9am with the top student athletes in football, taekwondo, goalball and shooting vying for top honours.
Established in 2007 following the hugely successful 2006 Asian Games in Doha, the SOP consists of multisport competitions in Olympic and Paralympic sports among students in Qatar aged 5 to 18 years. Sports included in the Program are tennis, shooting, athletics, handball, volleyball, table tennis, basketball, football, gymnastics, fencing, swimming, para-athletics and para-table tennis. This year's program saw taekwondo added, bringing the total number of sports to 14.
Commenting ahead of this year's finals, SOP executive director Mohamed al-Fadala said: "We wish all of this year's finalists the best of luck in their competitions. We hope that they will benefit from their experience of competing against the top student athletes in the country, make new friends from across Qatar and enjoy the celebration of school sport, creating memories that will live with them forever. We encourage everyone to come down and support them and see first-hand the excitement of the Schools Olympic Program.
"We are very pleased with the enormous growth of the Schools Olympic Program since it began in 2008. This shows the huge success and popularity of the program and this year's finals will be bigger and more exciting than ever before. It is our aim that the Schools Olympic Program spreads the Olympic values, educates through sport and develops healthy and responsible members of society. We hope to see even more students taking part next year and reap the many benefits of our unique program."
The SOP has grown from 7,000 participants and 300 schools in its inaugural edition in 2007-2008 to 26,454 students and 461 schools in last year's edition. The SOP aims to introduce students across Qatar to sport at grassroots level, educating them through the Olympic value and ensuring that sport will become an integral part of their future lives. Former participants in the programme include World Indoor High Jump champion Mutaz Barshim, Rahma al-Dulaimi, who represented Qatar in last year's Youth Olympic Games, and Mariam Farid, the young, up and coming hurdler, who this week won silver in the GCC Women's Games.
This year's edition of the SOP also witnessed the nation's biggest-ever Paralympic Day earlier in March, which saw over 800 student athletes from 66 schools take part in para-athletics, para-table tennis and goalball competitions. The final competitions of this year's Program on the 20th will have numerous family-friendly activities organized by theme partners Reach Out To Asia (Rota), a member of the Qatar Foundation, as well as many other activities organised by the Program's partners.
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