The 2015 FISEC Games came to a close yesterday evening with a ceremony at Qawra during which official presentations for team events and the Fair Play Awards were distributed to the various winners.

This year, some 800 young athletes, hailing mainly from Catholic schools from various parts of the world, were here for the multi-sport festival.

Six sport were on the calendar – athletics, basketball, football, futsal, swimming and volleyball. It was the sixth time that the Games were hosted on our shores.

The basketball girls finished the tournament on a high yesterday after beating Spain 63-43 in a play-off for third place.

France won the tournament following a comfortable 78-40 win over Flanders in the final.

The boys’ basketball tournament was won by Brazil. In the gold medal match, they edged Spain 73-71 with Austria getting the bronze. Malta had to settle for seventh place in the classification.

Elsewhere, the futsal boys failed in their bid to step on the podium after going down to France 4-2 in a match for third place.

Portugal won the tournament after beating Brazil 3-1 in the final.

In football, the two teams representing Malta – A and B – played against each other with third place in the standings at stake.

Malta A won the encounter 1-0 to finish ahead of Malta B and Netherlands. The gold medal went to Brazil who beat Great Britain 4-2 on penalties after a 0-0 draw in regular time.

The volleyball girls completed their tournament matches with a straight 3-0 win over Spain to finish fifth overall.

The Games serve as an ideal launch pad for promising young athletes to get their first taste of international competition.

Team Malta figured in all events and had several satisfactory results, including national records and gold medals in swimming and athletics.

Among those who were impressive in track and field was young Nicole Attard Glivau.

Attard Glivau won the girls’ 400m race at Marsa last weekend, registering a personal best time of 58.98 seconds in the process.