Punjab Youth Festival 2012: Large number of participants makes events interesting

A good number of around 65,000 members of the Sports and Youth Development Councils of the 1193 Union Councils took part in 523events throughout the province in the second level of the Punjab Youth Festival 2012on Thursday.
The Union Council level, which is the second phase of the Festival 2012 after the Neighbourhood and Village level, started on Saturday last and up till competitions were held in more than 1200 events and the figure of participation in this level has reached around 250,000.
Around 1200 took part in 60 events from 16 Union Councils in the Lahore district alone. At Ravi Town and Nashtar Town over 270 and 223 youngsters excelled in 14 events respectively while at Shalimar, Aziz Bhatti, Iqbal Towns and Samanabad Towns more than 100 each area participated in these localities. Meanwhile in the other districts of Lahore Division, Sheikhupura’s 605 youngsters excelled in seven events including badminton, athletics, arm wrestling, billiard, tug of war and cricket tape ball. Here 26 Union Councils remained active in the said events. On the other hand at Nankana Sahib 378 participated in sports as well as general events like naatkhani and qirat.
In Iqbal Town, which is one of the nine Towns of Lahore, Cricket tapeball match was held among the teams of Union council 117 in which Razzaq XI beat Arsalan XI by 13 runs.In Badminton eventa team of Nabeel beat Arif 2-0 (20-16, 20-12) while Najeeb defeated Zahoor 2-0 (20-19, 20-14).
In Arm Wrestling competitions of 70kgs category, Malik Ilyas was declared winner.In 70-85 kgs, Malik Imran won the bout while in 85+ kgs, Abdul Waheedhis match with ease.In Billiard, Mohammed Shahzad outplayed Abdul Razzaq.
In Union council 118, Billiard competitions were held that saw Mohammad Abbas beat Noman Ahmed 2-0.In Cricket tapeball, Munawar Qadri XI beat Arslan XI by 14 runs. In Arm Wrestling, 70 kgs category, Mohammad Naeem, in 70-85 kgs, Shahid Ali were the winners. In Shalimar Town, union council 21 block 2 defeated union council 22’s block 3 by 51 runs.
In Athletics 100 metres race, Ali Awan of union council 22 won with flying colours, Waqas Miraj attained second position while Faisal Majeed secured third position. In Arm Wrestling, union council 22’s 12 players participated and A team beat B team 2-1. In 75 kgs category, Naveed was the winner.
In football of union council 20, block 5 beat block 2 by 4-2 goals margin. In Tug of War, union council 20’s block 3 beat block 7, 2-0. In badminton tat was played between block 8 and block 3. Ijaz of block 8 brought fame for his locality when he defeat Mohib of block 3, 2-0.
In other parts of the province, around 7622 from 172 UCs took part in 78 events heldin Rawalpindi division where 2437 excelled in different sports and general events which also included handicraft, cooking, healthy baby competitions. At chakwal 41 UCs’ 3434 competed in seven categories of the second level. Similarly, Attock and Jhelum too remained involved in the festival to their fullest.
Sargodha Division had the participation of 4887 with maximum interest seen in the Sargodha city where 1795 contested for 16 events top honours from 48 UCs. Bhakkar had 1126’s participation and Mianwali got 1478 involved in 65 events.
Gujranwala was another division where 287 UCs lured in 17211 youngsters in 77 events with the main Gujranwala city having 13602’s involvement in 37 events while MandiBahauddin had 1268 people’s involvement in 15 competitions.
Faisalabad figured around 11036 in 66 competitions. In all 200 Union Councils had their involvement in the events while Sahiwal had 117 UCs’ 8884 participantsseen taking part in 49 events. Likewise at Multan, 7049 took part in 48 events with around 4869 taking part in nine events in Multan city alone.