Royal and Visakha U17 hockey champs
Royal College Colombo and Visakha Vidyalaya Colombo lifted the Under-17 boys’ and girls’ hockey titles respectively at the All-Island Schools Hockey Championship, which concluded at the Astro Turf in Matale last Sunday.
Boys’ champions Royal College
Right half Malith Rasanga powered Royal to wrap up the boys’ title with a one goal to nil win over the much-fancied Christ Church College Matale in the final. Malith made his way through Christ Church’s defence to score the solitary and winning goal midway in the first half. D.M. Prakash and S. Paraneetharan controlled the game.
In the semifinals, Christ Church Matale were powered by two goals, one each from Chathuranga and Dhananjaya Bandara beat Ananda College Colombo by 2-0 while Royal outplayed Zahira College Matale by 2-1. Saheer Bari and Rifat Uwais claimed a goal each for Royal and the losers’ solitary goal was scored by Mohamed Ifraz. Zahira Matale won the boys’ third place playoff with a 2-0 win over Ananda Colombo. Mohamed Imthad and Mohamed Aasir netted a goal each for Zahira.
In the girls’ championship, a solitary goal by left extreme Mithindi Senaviratne gave Visakha Vidyalaya a 1-0 win over Musaeus College Colombo in the final to emerge as girls’ champions. Mithindi dazzled with her stick work to slam-in the winning goal in the seventh minute of the first half. Ajith Manjula and Chaminda Abeyratne controlled the game.
In the semi-finals Visakha beat Sri Sangamitta Girls’ School Matale 4-3 on penalties and Musaeus outplayed Seetha Devi Girls’ School 
Kandy 2-0, also on penalties. The consolation final between Seetha Devi girls and Sri Sangamitta girls ended in a scoreless draw at full time and the final outcome was decided on penalties where by Matale Sangamitta girls emerged winners 4-3.
Meanwhile Saheer Bari of Royal and C. Chandrasekara of Christ Church Matale were named the Best Players in the boys’ segment. In the girls’ segment Yelani Perera of Visakha won the award for the Best Player while the award for the Best Goalkeeper went to Tharushi Bomulla of Musaeus.
Thirty-six boys and 24 girls teams from Colombo, Kandy, Matale, Kegalle, Gampaha, Kalutara, Badulla and Jaffna educational regions participated in the four-day tournament which was conducted from June 13 to 16. The tournament was conducted by the Sri Lanka Schools Hockey Association together with the Matale Schools Hockey Committee. It was sponsored by the British School of Applied Studies, Kandy Campus.
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