While briefing media on resolutions of Uganda Secondary Schools Sports Association Annual General Assembly held at Old Kampala on Saturday 14th October.
USSSA president Mr. Justus Mugisha has mentioned the interest of seeing boxing involvement in Schools Sports activities.
Mugisha said “Boxing is a sport we would like to have on our activities on course of grooming multi talents, a lot of students are interested in that sports disciplines and are left out but each and every sport needs to be given a chance, we have been with 14 sports disciplines but starting from 2024 we will be having 19, we are looking to see many students exposing their schools age”
Boxing is a sport which has been affected with several bans as some of sports heads claim boxing to be a sport which can cause harms to students.
The most remarkable ban was posted in 2009 led by the commissioner for physical education then Mr. Dan Tamwesigire.
The proposal by the Uganda Boxing Federation-UBF to return boxing to schools suffered a setback, follows the decision by the Sports State Minister, then Hon. Hamson Obua, to suspend the planned national schools boxing competition that was scheduled to run between June 18th and 28th, 2022.
The local Amateur Boxing Federation had planned to return boxing to secondary schools in a bid to re-develop the sport from the grassroots. The former Physical Education and Sports Commissioner, Dan Tamwesigire, raised concern about the safety of amateur boxers in schools on the grounds that the boxers are too young to withstand punches on their heads.
The efforts by the former Uganda Boxing Federation-UBF President, Roger Ddungu, to explain that the global amateur boxing body AIBA had made boxing safer with modern protection gear landed on deaf ears. Insisted on receiving expert approval that boxing is medically safe, causing the sport to lose momentum even in schools where it was once popular, such as Kololo high school and Dynamic SSS.
The current state minister for sports Hon. Peter Ogwanga has recently tightened the ban after getting in reach with a video in which coach Habert Kalungi committing a corporal punishment to a young female boxer Daphine Namitala after losing her match. The action which was heavily condemned by UBF boss Moses Muhangi.
