Cossasa team leaves for Botswana

Sikhumbuzo Moyo, Senior Sports Reporter
ZIMBABWE’s schools athletics team for the forthcoming Confederation of Schools Sport Associations of Southern Africa Championships (Cossasa) leaves the country this morning for this year’s version of the competition set for Francistown, Botswana next week.

The regional event will run from May 6-9.

Team Zimbabwe, made up of athletes from primary and secondary schools who were selected during a joint meet held at White City Stadium last month, has been in camp for the past week at Northlea High School preparing for the competition in which they will again be favourites having won the competition more than any other southern African nation.

“Our team is now intact, all the athletes reported for camp which made our preparations smooth and according to plan. We will have our last training session today (yesterday) before the send off ceremony tomorrow (today) afternoon. We then hit the road on Saturday as per schedule,” said Team Zimbabwe manager Philip Chikomwe, who is also the National Association of Secondary School Head in charge of athletics in Zimbabwe.

Chairman of the Zimbabwe Cossasa team technical committee Arthur Maphosa also expressed satisfaction with the team’s preparations and declared that they were going to gallantly defend their title in Botswana.

On their way to the winners’ podium last year, Zimbabwe, who were the hosts, managed to get 95 medals — 40 gold, 26 silver and 29 bronze.

Namibia were second with 75 medals and they were followed by Botswana who got 69 medals while Malawi managed only one gold medal to finish on fourth position.

Zimbabwe have won the championships four times including in 2011.

“It’s important to note that we have only lost this title once in 2012 when we returned to compete in these Games, having taken a sabbatical in 2004 otherwise we have been very dominant since then and are looking forward to maintaining that status quo. We visited the competition venue in Botswana recently and were impressed with conditions there,” said Maphosa, head of Gwanda High School.