300+ young athletes and coaches to receive scholarships from President’s Sports Club
The Central Council of the President’s Sports Club has approved a list of 332 scholarships for young Belarusian athletes and coaches – as reported by the press service of the President’s Sports Club
The average size of the annual scholarship will stand at Br7,500 (Br625 per month) and will be paid to promising athletes and coaches throughout 2023, starting from January.
When assigning scholarships for the next year, the performance of athletes in domestic competitions and in the international arena was taken into account, as well as the opinion of coaches and specialists in their sport, petitions from the relevant sports federations, associations and unions, departments (main departments) of sports and tourism of regional executive committees (Minsk City Executive Committee, Minsk Regional Executive Committee).
In total, 374 questionnaires from athletes and 222 questionnaires from coaches were received for inclusion in the list of scholarship holders. Based on the results of the analysis, 189 athletes were included in the list, of which 24 athletes claimed medals at the world and European championships in their respective age categories (five people earned gold medals, eight won silver awards, and eleven were bronze medallists), 10 Paralympic athletes and 133 coaches, representing 47 sport varieties.
Representatives of badminton Leonid Mironenko (coach), water polo Stanislav Mager (coach), field hockey Veronika Vrublevskaya and Alina Kovzan (coaches) – sports that are included in the Olympic programme – are among the scholarship holders for the first time. The scholarship winners of international forums include the Girls U10 World Cadet Chess champion Nika Venskaya, the European champion among boys in Thai boxing (63.5kg) Ruslan Kyamalov, and the winner of the ITF tennis tournament among women Darya Shauha.
“Last year, the President’s Sports Club initiated an experiment to support young promising Belarusian coaches in order to reduce the outflow of qualified personnel from the sports industry. Seventy young coaches – graduates (pupils and students) of educational institutions (secondary specialised education and higher education), working in their specialty for no more than four years – will receive support from the President’s Sports Club this year as well,” the press service of the President’s Sports Club added.
