SoccerFest 2015: Energy needed for the dying sport activities in Ile-Ife

I remembered back in the late 80’s towards the late 90’s, sports activities in Ile-Ife used to be like Christmas especially among the school children. I remembered people queuing for hours at Ife city stadium just to watch secondary schools playing each other especially when schools like Oduduwa College, St. John grammar and later in the late 90’s Moremi high school are involve in such
matches or competitions. Players like Ebire, Hanky Panky, Oleshin and many more are players that people will die to see playing. Inter house sport competitions are also things people look forward to at that time because of the excitement it brought to the people.
It’s unfortunate that sports activities is no longer the talk of the city again. You can barely heard about inter-house sport or any sport competition in the city again. The only time you hear about sport competitions especially soccer events in Ile-Ife nowadays is when a politician is running for office and after that nothing again. Sport is now a political tool which is not helping sport development in the city of Ife.
Thanks to SoccerFest Foundation, a non-government Organisation in Ile-Ife, the old glory sports especially soccer is coming back.
For the first time in Ile-Ife in many years, a major soccer event, SoccerFest 2015, was organized in Ile-Ife without any political influence and it was a success. Initially, SoccerFest was supposed to be an event to celebrate the 2 year anniversary of Knights Football Club, a popular non-league club in Ife but due to lack of funding it was postponed and almost canceled at one time. Due to the issue of financing, the management of Knights FC decided to turn it into a public competition instead of an invitational tournament. Immediately after this change, SoccerFest foundation Decided to take over the affair of the competition and the rest is a success story. It was the first competition in Ife that will have a Nigerian league team played in it and also have teams form outside Ife all the way to Lagos, Nigeria.
Not until the competition started that people started realizing it wasn’t a joke. Thanks to the support of Orisun FM and Crown FM, both in Ife, the spectators are in thousands which the organizers considered as too much for the event.
For almost a month, people in the city of Ife especially around the vicinity of Oduduwa College was excited about the event and the positive feelings it brought to the atmosphere after months of political crisis. According to SoccerFest Foundation, this is just the beginning of new life for sport activities in Ife. They plan to organize different competitions in Ile-Ife and environs every three months, something that never being done before.
You can know more about soccerfest foundation by going to their facebook page www.facebook.com/soccerfestng . You can also support the foundation by donating at     http://gofundme.com/w8h3uas