The Akenten Appiah-Menka University of Skills Training and Entrepreneurial Development (AAMUSTED) has joined the medal winners’ class of the Ghana Universities Sports Association (GUSA) Cross Country Competitions after the University won bronze in the Men’s 10-kilometer race during the 27th edition of the competition at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) on July 6, 2024. It was the third consecutive time AAMUSTED had featured in the keenly contested inter-universities annual cross-country competition.
The eight-member team the University presented for the Men’s 10-kilometer race managed to shrug off fierce opposition to amass an impressive 80 points to finish third in the race. That feat dislodged the University of Education, Winneba (UEW), as a perennial medal winner in the event.
The University of Ghana, Legon, maintained its gold medal-winning streak in the event, finishing the race with an admirable 34 points, followed by the University of Cape Coast (UCC), which also completed the race with 56 points.
In its previous participation in 2022 and 2023, AAMUSTED showed strong indications of breaking into the medal-winning class in a matter of time, as it missed a medal narrowly on both occasions by finishing fourth.
Thirteen (13) public universities participated in the 27th edition of the GUSA Cross-Country Competition, which also saw the introduction of the novelty four-member mixed-gender 10-kilometer relay race. AAMUSTED participated in that event and finished in the fifth position, but the University could not join the all-female event. The three (3) events were under the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) regulations and required a minimum of eight runners in a team. The best five finishing positions of members of each team were summed up to determine the eventual position of the teams in the race.
The Acting Director of Sports at AAMUSTED, Coach Julius Baba Apidogo, highly commended the AAMUSTED team for their exceptional performance. He said it was not easy to pick a medal at the GUSA Cross-Cross Competition, especially where there were a lot of teams with very high pedigrees in the sport.
He observed that picking a medal after only a third appearance in the competition meant that the University would soon become one of the fearsome sides that others would have to contend with. He said the University would continue to work hard to win the ultimate in the coming years to cement its place in the records of the GUSA competition as one of the greats.
He expressed gratitude to the Management of AAMUSTED for the support they give for sports development at the University and lavished praises on his assistant coaches – Dr. Abena Adasa Nkrumah and Mr. Alhassan Dramani Yakubu – for the crucial roles they played in preparing the AAMUSTED Team for the tournament.
Other participating universities were: the University for Development Studies (UDS), the University of Energy and Natural Resources (UENR), the University of Mines and Technology (UMaT), the University of Health and Allied Sciences (UHAS), Simon Diedong Dombo University of Business and Integrated Development Studies (SDD-UBIDS), and C. K. Tedam University of Technology and Applied Science (CKT-UTAS).
