Uganda wins in world scrabble championship
Friday December 08 2017
Contestants at the World Scrabble Championship in Nairobi in November 2017. PHOTO | COURTESY
Uganda emerged third at the recent World Scrabble Championship held at the Laico Regency Hotel in Nairobi, Kenya.
The championship, which ran from November 6 to 12, attracted over 400 Scrabble players who participated in seven different events. It was also the first time the championship was held in Africa.
The main event was the world championship and on the sidelines was the Kenya International Open.
With funding from the National Council of Sports, the Sajeki Agency and the Scrabble Association of Uganda, a team of seven Ugandan players exceeded all expectations by finishing third.
The main event had 118 contestants from 30 countries around the world, with the quota of players determined by the country’s previous performance.
Uganda went into the world tournament as underdogs with just three slots represented by Richard Geria (the Team Uganda captain for international tournaments), Dr Edgar Odongkara (a fresh graduate of the Makerere Medical School) and Phillip Edwin Mugisha.
Geria was ranked 21st, Mugisha 41st and Odongkara 52nd. Team Uganda however won the overall bronze medal behind India in second and Nigeria in first place.
This outstanding performance has earned Uganda an extra two slots, meaning the country will field three or more players in the 2019 world championship.
“This is a very big achievement for Uganda considering we came last in three past appearances,” Geria told The EastAfrican.
He is also the national co-ordinator and founding member of the Scrabble Association of Uganda and a former national coach.
“So you can imagine jumping from the bottom to the top of the world. I played almost 80 per cent of my games in the top 10 and I achieved the lowest equity loss of 3.78 in the annotated games. And Team Uganda had a win success rate of 57 per cent which propelled us to number three,” said Geria.
Geria was ranked third in East, Central and Southern Africa, followed by Kenyan Allan Oyende in 26th place.
“The future of scrabble in Uganda is bright because we plan to expand the game to all school levels. We expect youth participation to increase and then we can send youth players in global championships,” SAU chairman Dr. Mark Okwir told The EastAfrican.