Udupi: The Udupi District Athletics Association will organise a district-level Children’s Sports Meet-2018 at the Mahatma Gandhi District Stadium at Ajjarkad here on January 6. Addressing presspersons here on Wednesday, Dinesh Puthran, president of the association, said that the main intention of conducting the meet was to identify and nurture sports talent among children.

The tournament was being held for boys and girls in the under 9, under 11, under 13 and under 15 categories.

Besides holding individual competitions, there will be relay and other events. In every category, both individual championship and team championship awards would be given. The overall championship trophy too would be given to the winning team.Already, over 1,800 students from 175 schools from across the district have registered for the sports meet.

The organising committee is expecting that over 2,000 children would participate in the meet. The association had been holding the children sports meet for the last few years here and it was getting good response, he said.

Pramod Madhwaraj, Minister for Fisheries, Youth Empowerment and Sports, would inaugurate the sports meet at 10 a.m. at the District Stadium on Saturday. The valedictory and prize distribution would be held at 3.30 p.m. on the same day.

Dinakar Babu, president of the Udupi Zilla Panchayat, Meenakshi Bannanje, president of the Udupi City Municipal Council, and B. Narasimhamurthy, chairman of the Udupi Urban Development Authority, would be the chief guests for the valedictory, Mr. Puthran said. M. Chandrashekhar Hegde and Ramesh Kanchan, vice-president of the association, Seethanadi Satish Shetty, secretary, Gregory D’Silva, treasurer, were present.