St Ignatius make MSSA under-16 semi-finals

St Ignatius High School (Jacob Circle) made it to the U-16 Div IV semi-finals of the Mumbai Schools Sports Association inter-school football tournament with an emphatic 4-3 victory over Indian Airlines High School (Santacruz) via tie-breaker at Azad Maidan yesterday.

St Ignatius' Aniket Mohite (left ) vies for the ball with Indian Airlines'
Shivender Singh during their MSSA match yesterday. Pic/Sureshu00a0KK

The match ended 1-1 at regulation time after Zubair Shaikh scored for St Ignatius in the first half only to see his strike cancelled out by Indian Airlines' Shivendra Singh in the second half. In the tie-breaker, Ignatius' skipper and goalkeeper Uzair Ansari made two saves and even scored one to take his team into the last four stage.

Joshua Jadhav, Deepak Varma, Shahbaz Khwaja and Uzair were on target for Ignatius in the tie-breaker, while only Kumar Abhishek, Shardul Wasta and Ivan Fernandes could find the back of the net for Indian Airlines.

This is only the fourth inter-school season for St Ignatius, who are obviously overjoyed. "I have been training these boys for the last three years. The school team's performance has not been very impressive in the past. Each year we were knocked out in the pre-quarter-final stage. But we are just one step away from the final now, which is great," Ignatius' coach Ansari Sajid Sabir said.

Sabir now wants his lads to settle for nothing less than the title. "I don't want them to stop here. I want them to push themselves harder and win the title and get promoted," he added.

Other result
B-16-IV: Colaba Muncipal 2 (Mahesh Pendhari, Akash Rathod) bt Bombay International 1 (Veer Parikh); AVM East 3 (Harbind Thoror, Shalin Shanghavi 2) bt Cambridge (Kandivli) 2 (Karan Singh, Dhaval Madrecha); B-14-IV: Colaba Muncipal (5) (Akash Jadhav,
Nitesh More 3, Darpan Raut) bt Vibgyour 0