Winners of the recently concluded Jos Easter Tennis Tournament have amassed a total of 900k (nine hundred thousand naira), Nigeria Tennis Live has gathered.
The tournament which was concluded on Saturday, 30 March, 2024, produced winners in three different events, Boys and Girls’ Singles and Boys’ Doubles.
Suwa Nenrot defeated Abigael Yakubu 6-0, 6-3 in the girls’ Singles finale while Barnabas Alex bested Muplang Marcus in very tough and entertaining match which ended 6-4, 3-6, 10-8.
The pair of Ikechuku James and Emmanuel Jawon made sure they took home the prize money for the Doubles winner after seeing off the duo of Ukeme Cosmos and David Haruna 6-4, 6-0.
Coach Joseph Oke, the organizer of the U-16 event which was held at the SOFIT Tennis Center in Jos, informed our correspondent that players from the semis get to win prize monies at the tournament.
According to him: “Winners of the Boys and Girls Singles get 150k each, while the runners-up get 70k in each category.
“For the semifinalists, each of them get 40k and the same thing applies to the winners, runners-up and semifinalists in the Doubles event.
“Because it is a developmental competition, we are not giving them cash prize, the monies they won are strictly educational grants which we believe is best suited to the developmental stage for these young ones”.
On how he finances the tournament, the soft speaking coach noted that when he first started, he was funding the competition from his personal purse, but after a while, he started speaking with people around.
“This is the fifth edition of the championship, I have been running it since 2018.
“When I started, it was with my money, we were giving education grants of about 50k then but as time went by, people started supporting me. I targeted people with businesses and they have helped tremendously.
“And when support started coming in, we decided to raise the bar and increase the educational grants for the winners of the competition,” he told Nigeria Tennis Live.