Students to meet to pick representatives

JAKARTA (JP): A college sports meet in Ujungpandang, South Sulawesi, will be used as the arena to select the country's best students for the ASEAN Students Sports Meeting in Brunei in July.

Enoch Markum, director of the college students department of the Ministry of Education and Culture, told a press conference yesterday that 1,181 college students from all 27 provinces will compete in the event, which will take place from June 8 to June 14.

"So far, our main rival is Thailand. Two years ago we lost to the Thais in Singapore. But we won the 1990 and 1992 meets in Bandung, West Java, and Selangor, Malaysia," he said.

Track and field competitions and swimming are two sports in which the Thais excelled over Indonesia in the previous students meet.

Indonesia will send 141 college students, selected at the Ujungpandang meet, to represent the country in the ASEAN sports event.

The organizers had initially planned to stage only track and field, badminton, karate,pencak silat, swimming, soccer and sepak takraw at the Ujungpandang meet.

But due to financial problems, the organizers will also stage popular sports, like volleyball and basketball.

"Only Bengkulu and Jambi have not registered their athletes' names with the organizers," Enoch said.

The organizers will set up a special division to check on the college students ID cards to prevent any dishonesty or cheating.

"We'll involve sporting organization officials to supervise whether there are some national athletes, who are not college students, taking part in the event," he said.

By holding the biennial sports events for college students, Enoch expressed his hope that more colleges will give time and facilities to athletes to take part in national and international sports events.

"I hope teachers will pay more attention to students, who are also athletes, and boost their morale so they can achieve both academic and sporting success," he said. (yan)