Arena Stars Soccer School is just a year old but has soon become a big talking point.
This academy is situated in Masajja B zone, Masajja Division, Makindye Ssabagabo Municipality, Wakiso District in central.
The academy is composed of a number of players from the neighbouring countries of Uganda.
It currently has 10 Ugandans, 8 Sudanese, 5 Congolese, 8 Rwandans and 1 Somali; making a total of 32 players so far.
The academy mission echoes aloud; “To create employment from talents”, whilst the vision is “Creating a sports centred generation”.
According to the founder, Jackson Mukwaya, among the objectives of their founding included; fully exploiting football talents from with in the area, improving football within the area, exporting more footballers, joining national leagues, creating more employment to the people around, uniting refugees in the area for development and getting nurseries for talented young boys.
How the academy started:
In 2020, when Covid19 struck the country and later lockdown, schools were forced to be closed leaving many young boys idle.
“We came up with an idea in May 2020 to start up a football academy since we had a little space where we can train and a ball with 7 shirt jerseys.We used to request for cones from the nearby academy and a few more equipments. We started with five little boys between 7-10year and 8 boys between 13-16years and later the group grew to 18young kids and 16 big boys.” Mukwaya recalled.
When schools re opened, many young kids shifted to other academies due to lack of sufficient equipment.
In May 2021, the academy re-organized and restarted having a big number of boys between 13-20years and 6 young boys.
This team built on a foundation of hand in hand founded by Mukwaya who is also acting as the head coach.
Mukwaya is assisted by a one Samuel from Rwanda.
The team captain is Mico Candella Flavien (Rwandese).
The team is managed by Harriet “Maama Dora” Nyanzi and a board of Directors.
The academy uses the Masajja B community play ground, tagged as “The Arena”.
Contacts:
Phone: +256752459917 and +256787831395
Email:arenastars472@gmail.com
Facebook:Arena Stars
Instagram:@arena_stars_ug
An inspiring story
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