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KARACHI, May 18: Karachi Green were declared the Fifth Sindh School Games champions picking up 12 gold medals in the four-day meet which ended on Saturday evening at the National Sports Training and Coaching Centre.
Khairpur with eight gold medals finished runners-up, while Karachi White with seven silver, bagged the third spot, with 17 districts in Sindh participating in these games.
Fifteen-year-old Naseem Hameed, a product of the Talib training and coaching school, was indeed the star of the Games picking up four gold medals for Karachi Green.
Naseem credited herself with gold in the 100 and 200 metres, long jump and then anchored the winning Karachi Green team in 4x100 metres relay, finishing yards ahead of Razia Sher Khan, who anchored the Whites team who finished second, with Hyderabad grabbing the bronze.
Karachi Greens covered the distance in one minute 0.2 seconds.
It may be mentioned that last year at the same venue, Naseem won two gold and one silver medal in the Under-16 Athletic Meet organised by the Pakistan Sports Board.
The 4x100 metres relay was won by Karachi Green, covering the distance in 46.81 seconds. Khairpur lying fourth till the final baton changed hands, came in with a flying burst to grab the silver medal from Karachi Whites.
HOCKEY: The biggest upset in the games however, was created when the lads from Mirpurkhas, trounced last year’s champions Karachi Green 5-0, at the Habib Public School ground.
Adnan and Riasat led their team to this splendid victory with two goals apiece, while Tariq added one more for good measure. The winners led 2-0 at the breather.
In the girls event held at the YMCA ground, Karachi Green beat Sukkur on penalty strokes after both teams were locked at 1-1 after 40 minutes of full time.
Anna opened the scoring for the host team in the fifth minute when she sounded the board. With only two minutes to spare, Sukkur grabbed the equaliser through a fine field goal by Sana. Twenty more minutes of extra time was added, but the two teams were still on even par.
Penalty strokes were taken and trailing 1-2, the Sukkur players were furious when a decision went against them. The Sukkur goal-keeper made a neat save but dropped her hockey stick in the excitement and a goal was declared.
The Sukkur players refused to continue with the match and the officials had no alternative but declare Karachi Green winners by a 4-1 margin.
FOOTBALL: In the Football final played at the KMC Sports Stadium, Karachi Green helped on by centre-forward Feroze, edged out Mirpurkhas 1-0.
Mirpurkhas made several inroads into their opponents territory by the equaliser eluded them with the Karachi Green defence refused to budge an inch.
The Karachi team coached by Abdul Aziz Khan and managed by Saeedullah, has been unbeaten since the games were organised five years ago.
Wali Razi, Provincial Minister for Religious Affairs, Government of Sindh was the chief guest at the closing ceremony, filling in at the last minute for Mohammadmian Soomro, The Chief Minister, who had to proceed to Islamabad.
After distributing the trophies to the winners and runners-up, the Provincial Minister then declared the games closed.
