International students vie at sports festival

Hundreds compete in 8 events including soccer, volleyball and wrestling at KISSA tournament


Around 1,000 people turned up for the International Students Sports festival in Namyangju, Gyeonggi Province on Saturday.

More than 400 students from as far away as Gwangju and North Gyeongsang Province competed at the events at Central City, according to Sara Rai, assistant director of the Korea International Students Support Association, the organization behind the event.

Teams competed in eight events including soccer, volleyball and “ssireum” -- a Korean form of wrestling. Winners got trophies and prizes of up to 500,000 won, depending on the event.

The students organized their own football, volleyball and cheerleading teams -- generally representing their universities. The athletes and teams were then organized into groups named after famous Korean mountains.

Those that got involved had various routes in.

Steve Ko, president of Hankuk University of Foreign Studies’ international students organization, said there were about 60 competitors and supporters from his college.

After seeing some international students playing soccer in the parking lot, he asked them if they wanted to form a team for the tournament, after which a women’s team and a cheerleading team joined them.

Ethiopian computer science student Yidea Getachaw played for Inter Ajou in the football tournament as part of Hallasan. He said he went to a similar tournament last year, but the facilities and turnout were much better this time.

His team was also more successful.

“This tournament is for us!” he said as his team’s women’s 4x100 meters sprint team won by a significant margin. “We won this, the volleyball, the women’s football, and now we are going to win the men’s football.”

There was a significant contingent from Ajou University in Suwon, but Getachaw said they hadn’t received much help from the school.

“The students, we are trying to make it like a family, so we did it all ourselves. We get our own kit and organized sponsorship. The school is not very cooperative.”

Kanhcana Pabasara, a Sri Lankan student at Hanseo University studying aeronautical engineering, was going to compete but decided to volunteer when he got the chance. He said he wanted to do something to help repay his scholarship.

“Volunteering is really fun, he said “I heard about this tournament last year and our cheerleading team came first place, and I’m looking forward to ours later.”

Rai said the tournament had gone well.

“We were very pleased with the response of the people who attended,” she said. “It’s been very positive.”

Rai conceded that the men’s football had dominated the tournament, at would aim to make any future festivals more balanced.

She said that it was hard to recruit women’s football teams -- there was a 4-team league instead of a knockout tournament -- but she was optimistic that the turnout would be better at future events.

By Paul Kerry (paulkerry@heraldcorp.com)