By Wafi A. Rashid
GOMBAK: 22 December 2017 – The IIUM Mustangs will be competing in the biannual Sukan Insitut Pengajian Tinggi (SUKIPT) organised by the Ministry of Higher Education which will be held in Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) and in the Klang Valley area early next year.
The eight-day long games to begin from 2 February will see a total of 27 games to be contested including football, rugby 7s, petanque, swimming, archery and athletics among many others.
An astounding 101 institutions of higher learning across Malaysia took part in the most prestigious varsity sports festival in the 2016 edition, and the 2018 games will aim to achieve no less than that.
The Mustangs contingent will be competing in 14 of the 27 events with an eye for gold in combat sports such as pencak silat, taekwondo and karate. Assistant sports instructor at the Sports Development Centre (SDC), Shahrul Azni, stated that “the training for many of the combat sports has been going on since November but it is yet to get intensive”.
“The teams are following strict programmes that run for up to a hundred days, and team sports such as the rugby 7s team has been involved in a number of different friendlies to prepare for the games, ” Shahrul added.
Shahrul believed that the Mustangs can bring home more gold than they did in the 2016 edition that saw them finished eight place in the overall standings with six gold, five silver and 13 bronze medals.
The 2018 varsity sports calendar will kick-off with SUKIPT in February followed by the Majlis Sukan Universiti Malaysia (MASUM) games (in two phases) and will end with the ASEAN University Games in December.***