Team Lagos Nimota Aregbesola is Abuja 2018 breakthrough star

Not everybody gets to maximized the best of a first time opportunity but for 19 years old Nimota Aregbesola, of Team Lagos, she got few of her firsts in her career this year and it has laid a path to greatness for her.

National Daily learnt that Nimota, was 13 years of age when the 18th Edition of National Sport Festival took place in the city of Lagos , she couldn’t make the top eight for the women but she trained with them .

In her first Sport Festival this year at the 19th National Sport Festival in Abuja , the 19th years old got to the semi-final of the women’s singles event losing to eventual winner, Ojomu Ajoke of FCT.

She got a bronze medal.

What is more intriguing was her quarter-final opponent in the women’s singles – six times Olympian and Africa legend, Funke Oshonaike, and the founder of the Funke Oshonaike Foundation.

Nimota, is a member of the foundation and the Olympian often refer to her as her “daughter.”

With a age gap of 25 years and career difference that spans more than three generations of Nigerian table tennis players .

Surprisingly, Nimota defeated Funke Oshonaike (4-3) for the first time in their first meeting – it was the headline of the table tennis events at the National Sport Festival .

On the 30th of November, five days before the National Sport Festival , the Lagos- based Nimota got to her first Asoju Oba Women’s Singles final losing to four times winner of the Championship, Bose Odunsanya , just two years after making her senior debut at the Championship.

In the Women’s Double at the Sport Festival, the duo Nimota and Bose Odunsanya won the Silver medal while in Women’s team which also includes Oyeniyi Kehinde, they won the bronze medal for Lagos state .

In just one year, ‘the giant killer’ has assembled her name amongst the future generation stars of African table tennis, as  the defeat of Funke Oshonaike is set to be a symbolic exchange of baton.