adminRicky Zililo Senior Sports Reporter
AT least 200 people are expected to take part in the second edition of the Sports Leaders’ Institute of Zimbabwe (SLIZ) Summer Camp to be held in Kariba from November 20-22.
SLIZ president Russell Mhiribidi said college principals, university deans of students, headmasters, sports officers from the Zimbabwe Prisons and Correctional Services as well as soccer club officials will attend the three-day workshop.
“The major objective of this workshop is to ensure effective and efficient teaching as well as participation in physical education by pupils and students,” said Mhiribidi.
He said at the end of the camp participants were expected to clearly define the role of physical education in sport development.
“There’s also a need for participants to understand and define the basic fundamentals of event management and come up with a major event hosting plan,” he said.
SLIZ is a body whose mission is to facilitate and provide a conducive environment for optimum growth and advancement of the nation’s sports leaders with emphasis on capacity building and professional development in line with existing global trends.
The camp has been endorsed by the supreme council for sport in Africa, the Africa Union Sports Council Region 5. In July, SLIZ held a sports management winter camp at the Matopos National Park, which attracted 70 participants from Naph, Nash and some tertiary institutions.
Just like the Matobo retreat, the Kariba camp will see participants brainstorming and thrashing out possible solutions to the challenges being faced by sports administrators across the board.
“The problem that we’re facing as a nation is that certain administrators seem to condone age-cheating. Such administrators are affecting development of sport and athletes because of their selfish motives of winning at all costs. We’ll continue preaching the anti-age cheating gospel until people responsible for nurturing young talent at development stages start doing the right things. For that reason, we’ve invited administrators within these key and strategic institutions Naph, Nash and tertiary institutions, as well as clubs so that they go and plant the correct seed of not cheating,” said Mhiribidi.
He said he was concerned that some schools even went to the extent of fielding “ghost pupils’ at tournaments.
SLIZ have invited football legend Moses Chunga to lead discussions on how talented young soccer players can be developed to benefit Zimbabwean soccer.
Other key speakers at the Kariba camp include microbiologist Kudzai Vera, Zimbabwe Open University (ZOU) marketing director Robson Mhandu and Musunza Sombwa from the Olympic Youth Development Centre in Zambia.
Sombwa will make a presentation on international co-operations while Mhandu will lead discussions on media relations. Vera will educate participants on nutrition since diet has a bearing on athletes’ performance.
Online Reporter