adminCollin Matiza Sports Editor
THE Zimbabwe Handball Federation are making every effort to revive the senior national league in their endeavour to create a competitive environment for local players.
Amon Madzvamuse, the ZHF president, said yesterday that they were working hard to bring the national league back on its feet and it should be up and running by next year.
He said this while announcing that they will be sending a strong contingent of 153 athletes and officials to the Umlazi Invitational Tournament which gets underway this weekend in Durban, South Africa.
The squad is scheduled to leave for Durban today and returning home on December 10.
“Zimbabwe have once again been invited to participate at the Umlazi Invitational Tournament in Durban and the ZHF are going to send a contingent of 153 athletes and officials. The good thing about this year’s tournament is that 53 members of this delegation are from the Matabeleland region and most of them are from the JZ Handball Club which is sending a senior men’s team.
“The most interesting thing about this is that JZ Handball Club are registered with the ZHF under our new club registration system which we are putting in place as we move to revive our national league.
“We also have a Bulawayo Select side which is sending 23 players and officials to the Umlazi Invitational Tournament while there will be three representative sides from the Masvingo Province and they are Rufaro High School, Danhamombe High School and Serima High School,” Madzvamuse said.
Two club sides from Harare — Churchill Bulldogs and Zengeza 4 Handball Club — and Kutama High School from Mashonaland West Province are also expected to take part in the same tournament in Durban together with a senior women’s side from Morgan Zintec College.
Madzvamuse said the inclusion of JZ Handball Club, Churchill Bulldogs and Zengeza 4 Handball Club in the Zimbabwean delegation for this year’s Umlazi Invitational Tournament shows that they were moving in the right direction in their efforts to have a viable national league system in this country.
“As the ZHF, we are proud of the movement that we have poised in handball . . . Now we are having clubs and schools representing the nation in major international tournaments. In the past we had schools taking part in these events but we are hoping to have more club sides coming into the fold.
“The reason why we were concentrating on sending schoolchildren to these tournaments in the past is that we wanted them to quickly go and join or form clubs once they’ve completed their education.
“This is now slowly bearing fruit as more clubs are going to be formed and will register with us in the not-too-distant-future,” said Madzvamuse.
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