Shooting leagues started in Lviv schools this week. Pupils of grades 9-11 compete in air rifle shooting and the winners will be determined by the end of the month.
“We have a unique program in Lviv – the program of school sports leagues. Today we choose the best in 7 sports. In addition to shooting, there is also futsal, basketball, volleyball, e-sports, athletics, and cheerleading. Almost all leagues are team competitions, but since we live in such realities, when the enemy is constantly threatening us, and everyone should be able to handle weapons, it was decided to make school competitions also in shooting. This is currently a pilot project, but we will scale it up. Every Ukrainian should be involved in sports, and schools are the best tool for popularizing sports,” says Anton Nikulin, head of the Lviv Sports Department.
This week, each school will choose the best shooters, next week the winners of the schools will compete at the district level, and in a week the final city-wide competitions will be held, where three winners of the school shooting leagues in the Lviv community will be chosen from among the winners of the district stages.
Pupils of grades 9-11 will take part in the competition, which is approximately 17,000 children.
“All 9th, 10th and 11th grade students of our schools participate in the first stage of these leagues, because they all have shooting practice within the scope of the “Defense of Ukraine” subject. But we do not plan to stop there, and we want to hold these leagues among students of the 6th, 7th and 8th grades as well. We have a good base of centers of national and patriotic education, which have all the necessary conditions for such competitions. We want to hold the final on the basis of a professional sports shooting range, so that schoolchildren feel the scale and true spirit of a high-quality sports competition,” emphasizes Andriy Zakaliuk, head of the city’s education department.
The shooting competition program includes three trial and five qualifying shots. The distance from which students shoot is 10 meters. Today, students of school No. 36 tested their strength in these competitions. Among them was the eleventh-grader Rostyslav, who managed to show very good results.
“It’s my first time participating in such competitions, I really liked it. I shot pretty well. At first there were test shots, which were not ideal, but already on the scoring shots I managed to collect as many as 37 points, which is still the best result among my classmates. I would really like to get to the next stage and compete with students from other schools in Lviv,” Rostyslav Ivanyk shared his impressions.
We remind you that Lviv school sports leagues are sports competitions developed in accordance with the world and European experience of such events. The main goal of the project is to create an atmosphere of a sports holiday among schoolchildren of the Lviv urban territorial community, as well as to increase the number of schoolchildren who engage in sports on a permanent basis and lead a healthy lifestyle. The first competitions took place in March 2023.