adminrecords at the just-ended Mashonaland Junior Championships.
Cockcroft, whose team retained the Mashonaland Junior Championships title, said there are a lot of talented upcoming swimmers in this country who can become world-class athletes but they need to stay focused to reach that level.
“Definitely, the ability is there, the standard is high. Some of our swimmers are going to South Africa’s High Performance centres. We do have children who are good and are very much in that direction.
“We have enough talent.
“We always hope to get there. Nomvula (Mjimba) has the promise if you certainly consider her drive and push.
“Bruce Chiang is also in the same direction, he has set some of the national records himself. We just hope that the children stay focused. It’s a long process but we just got to get them focused,” said Cockcroft.
The Harare Otters Swimming Club coach said there was need to work with the schools if the nation is to fully exploit the talent it has in the sport.
She noted that the local set-up was different when compared to other countries where the young athletes have to go through a specific training programme.
“We have to work with the school system so that we get swimmers as often as we can.
To get to the senior level is the effort they put in that produce results.
“We have a little bit of a different set-up in our country.
“In other countries, the children go through a specific training programme and we actually don’t have that here.
“We give our children the opportunity to do all the sports at school level so it’s difficult to wrestle the child to balance on all sports and this is where the problem is.
“It would be lovely to have such a set-up but right now we do what we can,” said Cockcroft.
Cockcroft, who has been into coaching for 30 years, said the improvement of swimming facilities was also an important issue to be considered for the sport to be viable and match world standards.
“We have the facilities but obviously it would have been nice to have indoor and heated pools but we will use what we have.
“We have got very dedicated coaches, we love what we do and it’s satisfying to see those children going forward doing something with themselves,” said Cockcroft.
Online Reporter