THE FOUNDERS
Who We Are
Murtaza Kurbanhussein
CO-FOUNDER
Most People know me as PLAZA!
Born in Tanga, lived in Morogoro for 16 years before moving to Dar es salaam. Having studied and lived in Canada for 7 years, I have had tremendous experience with adapting to different situations, mostly what everyone has to do when playing sports
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Abbas Adamji
CO-FOUNDER
Hi, My name is Abbas. Born in Dar-es-Salaam, I completed my primary and secondary school in DSM, before moving to Nairobi and thereafter to the UK for my further studies.
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What does sports mean to Abbas?
I personally don’t consider sports as leisure, I think it’s a therapy, it helps in many ways be it physically or mentally. I have been fortunate enough to have been exposed to various sporting environments. I vividly remember as a kid, whenever my grandfather would visit us, I would give him the bowl and I would bat for hours long. That is my last memory of him and I will always cherish it.
Murtaza's Sports Passion
My passion for sports is inexplicable. I started playing sports since I was 8, football at first, and slowly increasing my repertoire by participating in cricket, table tennis and badminton. Since a young age, I’ve been involved in sports, and my biggest controversial moment was choosing to support arsenal over Man Utd, going against my dads choice. Although I did stick with him and I’m proud to say I’m Simba Damu.Moving on, when I moved to Dar es salaam, my passion for sports increased even more. I organized my first football tournament in Ramadhan when I was 16 years old. I faced a lot of difficulties but my passion of sports didn’t stop me. When I turned 16, I played football in the East African sports festival And came runners up. When I turned 18, I participated in East African sports festival for our community and became a table tennis champion.
Abbas on playing for Tanzania
Having represented the Tanzanian National Cricket Side in under-13 (Kenya) and under-19(Namibia), my mind opened up to a lot of new perspectives. I met new people, learned so much about myself, the power of community and so much more.
Murtaza and Abbas on organizing tournaments
My colleague Plaza and I have organized many tournaments in Dar-es-Salaam to a community level and external level. One of the proudest moments for us was to have organized a tournament which covered 7 sports. The beauty of the tournament was that we managed to implement a virtual IPL style auction system for selection of players. In addition to that, the beauty of tournament was that the teams were not only competing for one sport, they were competing for the Overall Cup.
Recently, we organized an Indoor Cricket Tournament and shortlisted 120 best players of Dar-es-Salaam from which sponsors had to create a team, again using a virtual auction system. We fabricated a buzzer system to keep the feel of the auction alive.
SO WHY ROHO?
This idea came in our mind during 5th Edition of Seifee Sports Bonanza in which we did a juniors U-14 tournament. We were thrilled and shocked to see the talent that was in place which needed some sort of grooming. This is the opportunity we want to provide them with. Our love of sports strives to help future generations excel in sports and do what we didn’t have the opportunity to do.Apart from that, I, Abbas, said to myself, me and my siblings were excellent in sports from young age but we did not get the platform to take it seriously and excel from it. We would win trophies and awards in tournaments but we weren’t getting exposed to a wider audience. I thought, like me there must be thousands of kids who have the potential of making a career out of it. And that gave birth to ROHO SPORTS ACADEMY