KATHMANDU, July 2: The third edition of the Turkish Airlines ENGAGE Empowering League, the biggest adaptive sport competition in South Asia promoting disability rights through wheelchair basketball, ended on June 30 with reigning champion Wheelchair Sport Association, W.S.A. and Tribhuvan Army Club, T.A.C. reconfirming their superiority in the female and male categories respectively.
The finals of the League that started on June 2, with the participation of nine male teams, including for the first time teams from Chitwan, Pokhara and Nepalgunj and five female teams from the Kathmandu Valley, were held in the central covered hall Rangasalaand saw the participation of over 600 people with many schools sends their students to watch very entertaining games.
B.I.A. club won both the finals for third position, female and male categories. The finals for first female category position saw a very tough competition between W.S.A. and the newest added team, W.W.B.A. and the game was very even in all four quarter with W.S.A. only prevailing towards the end.
In the male competition, T.A.C. once again prevailed over Jawalakhel Wheelchair Sport Club that had started the game very strong but lost stream in the last minutes of the final quarter. It was a very tight game and very entertaining and the audience truly enjoyed.
Building relationship
An interesting surprise was the performance of Pokhara team in the male category that had a successful first phase of the League that projected them to fight for the third position. Always in the male competition, S.I.R.C. who ended up winning the Fair Play trophy was also an interesting surprise with a level of the game greatly improved.
In the female competition, as already mentioned, W.W.B.A. made up by players from other existing team showed a great quality of the game and it was very close to clinch the title in its first appearance.
Hemkala Sunuwar from W.S.A. the champion of the third edition of the Turkish Airlines ENGAGE Empowering League won the MVP prize together with Prem K.C. from J.W.S.C while Joty Aryal from W.S.A. and Raju Katuwal from T.A.C. were once again the top scorers.
The League had Turkish Airlines as Title Sponsor and Turkish Airlines that joined the program under the banner of its corporate social responsibility program “Widen your Heart”.
The League is focused at creating awareness on the rights of persons with disabilities with a special focus on the implementation of new Disability Rights Act.
For this reason, the League’s motto was “Fair game for all: Make disability rights real” and it also entails awareness programs at school levels and training of youths and students on issues related to social inclusion and disabilities.
Turkish Airlines is a strong believer of sports to promote social inclusion and disability rights and it’s happy to support the League since its inception three years ago.
Abdullah Tuncer Kececi, General Manager of Turkish Airlines Office in Nepal in his closing speech, expressed his appreciation towards all the players, wishing to support the league also in the future, making it bigger and bigger.
