The President of the Pan African Scrabble Association (PANASA) Adekoyejo Adegbesan has described the debut of Scrabble as demonstration sports at the ongoing African Games as a fulfilled dream.
Adegbesan elated about the grand entry, however, alluded that it was not a stroll in the park for the mind game to be accepted as a demonstration sport by the organising body.
“We made history today March 15th for scrabble in the 13th African Games. If you backdate us to April last year, we weren’t in a sport in the African Games.
“We had a couple of meetings with the minister in Ghana, and somehow we found ourselves in the Games and, it has been a bumpy ride.
“We have been pulled out at several points in time after several committee meetings, brought back, but finally, we play the first tile of the scrabble game at the African Games.
“It is a dream come true. It is one of the things I wanted to achieve as the president, and to achieve it this time gives a great feeling,” he said.
The president revealed that moves will begin to ensure Scrabble becomes a competitive sport at the Commonwealth Games.
“We think it is more difficult to get to African Games than to get to the Commonwealth Games because it is restricted to English countries, but African Games is a combination of both French and English. So for us to break that barrier in African Games, it makes our stories easy to tell when we make our case to the commonwealth Games.”
“We are going to document what has happened here, and we will make a good report to ensure that Scrabble is looked at differently as a competitive sport,” he said.
