(Macao, November 19, 2008) To start with the exciting Tennis
Showdown 2008, top tennis player, James Blake and legend John McEnroe met
children from a local boarding school in Coloane, to share a casual and fun
time with them on the day before The Venetian Macao Tennis Showdown, November
19, 2008.
Thirty children aged between 8 and 13 years old from
Lar De S. Jose Ka-Ho, were invited by The Venetian Macao to join this community
event, and be the first visitors to the preview of our upcoming new play
facility for children called Qube at The Venetian Macao. Located on level 5 and occupying 9,000
square-feet, Qube is the desired playground for the young and active ones. They
were all very excited about meeting the tennis greats of their dreams at Qube.
At the adventure playground these children competed
in various fun challenges in the new “jungle gym” equipment, including a six-meter-high drop slide, three-lane
astra slide, three V-net bridges, over and under barriers, a zigzag net
climber, specially designed and manufactured for Qube by Taylor-Made of the UK.
In addition, Qube has installed computers with free Internet access, PC games,
multimedia X-Box and Nintendo’s Wii consoles that children are free to
discover.
After a warm welcome to James Blake and legend John McEnroe, the 10 vigorous young winners of the
various challenges were delighted to have the unique opportunity to receive professional
instruction from top tennis
players, James Blake and legend John McEnroe. Both Blake and McEnroe enjoyed
playing with the children at the “Wii Challenge”. With this new interactive
computer game, Blake and McEnroe showed children the fundamentals in tennis
while children unlocked their tennis potential and had fun.
The
Venetian Macao has been showing great support to the local sport development
and encouraging youths to keep up their hobbies by providing them opportunities
to meet the sport legends for almost each of the international sports event
that take place at The Venetian Macao.
In
fact, a tennis clinic was organized to underprivileged children after The
Venetian Macao Tennis Showdown with Roger Federer and Pete Sampras last year. To
name a couple more, NBA also provided a basketball clinic to the Macao Special
Olympic 2007; while Manchester United hosted a youth soccer clinic for
teenagers from Macau National Team.
The
Escola de San Josẽ, Ka-Ho is situated in Coloane in the Ka-Ho Village.
This
non-profit
boarding school is built in 1973, mainly for children from less privileged
background, some of whom were over-aged, abandoned, marginalized, discriminated
against or having family problems.