Muslim Track and Field Championships coming to Toronto
The first ever Muslim Track and Field Championships are coming to the Greater Toronto Area on May 25, 2013.
“The competition will be open to youths, 10 to 20 years old, both boys and girls and will be at the Toronto Track and Field Centre which is at York University,” said Riyad Khan, a founder of Leading Out Loud (LOL) Inc., which is organizing the event.
LOL Enterprises was recently formed by Riyad Khan and Bilal Qureshi, teachers at the Islamic Foundation School.
LOL aims to provide unique opportunities for Muslim youth and young people in general within the Greater Toronto Area.
“Myself and Bilal from the Islamic Foundation School (IFS) have had this idea for sometime and we have a core group of students who graduated from IFS who wanted to do more for the community,” Riyad Khan told IQRA.
“We are going to be a sanctioned event through Athletics Ontario, so it can count as a preliminary event to go onto further competition,” said Khan. “So if anyone comes and breaks a provincial record, those times will be official.”
“Leading Out Loud Inc. wants you to join in and Be Orange with us,” according to the group’s website. “What does it mean to Be Orange? The colour orange embodies many of the core values of our organization. It has been associated with traits of warmth, energy and ambition.”
The founders are hoping to expand their offerings in the near future.
“We are starting with one competition but we are not restricted to athletics,” said Riyad Khan. “We want to do other things in the future, such as leadership conferences.”
“At the school we take our students to events, such as the Ontario Student Leadership conference or interfaith events or Me to We, on a yearly basis and we are the only Islamic school there,” he added. “So we would like to do something like these so we can get more Muslims on board.”
For more information, visit: www.lolinc.ca