The boys and girls from the Hill capital thoroughly out shone their counterparts from other areas with St Sylvester’s winning overall boys at the ABA Youth Boxing championship which was conducted at the new Gymnasium of the Sports Ministry.
The top 5 positions in the boys and girls categories were won by the pugilist from Kandy. Sttaking 3 of the top boys categories grabbed the Lt. Gen. Jagath Jayasuriya Challenge Trophy. They beat another Kandy outfit Vidyartha by 15 points to take second. Dharmaraja College became second runner up causing a complete Kandy white wash.
Central College Pilimathalawa won the girls’ overall championship obtaining 17 points followed by Sri Swarnajothi National College again from Kandy with 13. MAS Southern became the second runners up.
The best boxer in the boys category went to D.R.S. Gunasena of Sivali Central, Ratnapura, who defeated B.P. Kumara of St. Sylvester’s College in the Bantam Weight and Trinity boy M.M.Ziard became best loser because he lost his bout by a narrow margin of ten points to nine.
B.G.K. Lalani of MAS Southern won the best female boxer title, and S.G. Samudra Bandara became the best female loser.
The event which was conducted by the Schools Boxing Associationserves as trials for the ASBA Asian Confederation Youth Boxing Championships 2013.
The chief guest Lt Col (rtd) Hemantha Weerasinghe a distinguished pugilist himself winning best boxer at Stubbs Shield, ABA best boxer and Flyweight Champion graced the occasion and distributed awards.
