adminCollin Matiza Sports Editor
IN an ambitious move that is going to boost sports tourism in the Midlands city of Kwekwe and also help in the development of handball in this country, the Zimbabwe Handball Federation are looking at staging the first Kwekwe International Handball Festival in March.
ZHF secretary-general Alphos Magiya exclusively told The Herald at the weekend that an idea to host the Kwekwe International Handball Festival was recently mooted, getting the full blessings of the Mayor of Kwekwe, Matenda Madzoke.
The festival, whose dates have been slated for March 23-26, will be designed or modelled along the same lines as the world-popular Partille Cup tournament which is held annually during the first week of July in Gothenburg, Sweden, where Zimbabwe have been sending junior teams for the past six years.
In fact, the Partille Cup was started by a Swedish handball club IK Sävehof. When the tournament started in 1970, the Partille Cup was played in the small town of Partille. In 2001 the tournament started to move in to Gothenburg, and was completely moved in 2004.
Today, the Partille Cup is the world’s largest international youth handball tournament. The event takes place in Gothenburg during week 27 every Summer in the European country. Since the start, over 400 000 participants from 90 countries and six continents have participated.
Last year’s tournament was the biggest ever with 1 120 teams and over 20 000 participants from 44 nations, including Zimbabwe.
And Magiya said they have now decided to come up with their own version of the Partille Cup in Zimbabwe by staging the Kwekwe International Handball Festival in which they will be inviting top junior clubs from all over the world to take part in this event.
“We recently met with the Mayor of Kwekwe (Matenda Madzoke), who surprisingly happens to be a keen sport follower and we sold him the idea of staging the Kwekwe International Handball Festival and he immediately gave this project his thumbs up.
“He said this was a brilliant idea which does not only help in the development of handball in this country but will also help in boosting sports tourism in Kwekwe and the surrounding areas as we are looking at inviting teams from the Southern African region and overseas to take part in this international handball festival which we hope will be an annual event.
“In fact, our friends from Sweden, who organise the Partille Cup, are also happy that we have decided to come up with our own youth handball festival which is modelled along the same lines as the Partille Cup and they indicated that they are willing to help us in staging this event,” Magiya said.
And the ZHF are now looking at staging the Kwekwe International Handball Festival in conjunction with the Kwekwe City Council, the Midlands Handball Board and Kwekwe High School.
This has seen Edson Chirowodza of Kwekwe High School being appointed as the festival’s technical director and he said the KIHF, Midlands Handball Board together with Kwekwe High School will be inviting up to five teams from each province of Zimbabwe and two teams from any other country to be part of this project in which they will have a partnership with Kwekwe City Council.
“The basic concept of this project for 2016 is to develop the game of handball in Zimbabwe from the age of six. Our main objective is creating a platform for talent identification, nurturing and developing the players for the ZHF in its national mandate to build strong national teams from grassroots level.
“We want to create a lifelong interest for sport and handball in particular by forging synergies with the international community for our schools, community clubs, universities and colleges in branding Zimbabwean handball as a scouting ground that is second to none.
“We also want to give coaches, officials and players basic information in both theory and practice at international level.
“The players shall be inspired, not only in their role as players, but also to become future coaches and officials, inspiring schools and teachers to set up clubs, starting competitions and (coaching) clinics. They will also make friends of the same interests worldwide,” Chirowodza said.
The festival will be open to different age-groups ranging from the Under-10s up to the Under-20s for both boys and girls.
Teams will be accommodated at various schools in Kwekwe. For each delegation a classroom will be reserved at $1 per person per day and delegates will be accommodated at nearby lodges and hotels.
The participation fees for the teams have been pegged at $20 per team for primary schools and $30 per team for secondary schools. There will be medals and trophies for the winners of the various age-groups at the festival.
Online Reporter