How Grange School Lagos emerged overall champions at World School Games, Dubai 2020

Pulse Mix 14:11 - 11 March 2020

While presenting the tournament-winning U-13 team to fellow students, staff members, and parents in the packed school hall on recently, Head of School, Ms Abra Stoakley declared: “This, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, is what success looks like.”

She said, for the young athletes, captained by Jordan Demuren and Toni Ogunlade, to have recorded such an emphatic victory with a total of 53.5 points in swimming, athletics, and football, several days of intense workouts and a unyielding focus on that objective had been recorded. And eventually, she noted, “These impressive young men and women that we sent to the World School games have exceeded all expectations.”

The Under-13 team, appearing at the World School Games for the first time, also set a new record in the triple jump boys’ event. Ore Alabi, captured the gold medal with a distance of 10.33m. Tobi Alonge followed right behind by recording a distance of 9.89m. Both Alabi and Alonge dismantled the old record of 9.48m.

How Grange School Lagos emerged overall champions at World School Games, Dubai 2020

Grange School Lagos, marking the 62nd anniversary of its founding in 2020, scored 18 points in athletics, 17.5 in swimming, and 17.5 in football. They came first overall in athletics and swimming, and second overall in football.

Across all individual and team activities, the team won a cumulative total of twenty-eight (28) medals, and all twenty-four (24) team members received gold medals as overall winners of the games.

With their 53.5 total points, the ‘Grangers’ separated themselves from the nearest competitor by a staggering 9.5 points.

Director of Activities, Mr Okechukwu Obi, said his team’s success at this year’s event would inspire the students to aspire for even greater achievement. “Already Grange School has the best choir in Nigeria and we lead in sports in the country. Now, we have gone out to show that we can also be the best in the world,” he said, adding that “I look forward to the children working even harder to do better next year so that we can win it again. That is how to show that winning the games in 2020 was not a fluke.”

How Grange School Lagos emerged overall champions at World School Games, Dubai 2020

Previously, in 2018, the Grange School Under-11 team had entered the World School Games but had returned with moderate results. In 2020, they recorded similar results. However, the Head of Secondary School, Ms Adetola Oladeji expressed her sustained optimism for the Under-11 contestants. “Soon, some of these children in the Under-11 group will definitely transition to the winning Under-13 team,” she said.

The Grange School U-13 team, added Ms Stoakley, have emerged as worthy role models who have “shown all of us how to set an ambitious goal and work hard to achieve it. There is an extraordinary achievement, one which will remain with them for the rest of their lives.”

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