adminEllina Mhlanga
Senior Sports Reporter
ZIMBABWE’S Under-20 and Under-18 national teams are scheduled to regroup early next week for their final camp ahead of the International Handball Federation Trophy Zone VI due to take place in less than two weeks in Harare.
The tournament is catering for men’s teams and is running from October 17 to 23.
Chitungwiza Aquatic Complex and City Sports Centre are the competition venues.
Nine countries — Malawi, Eswatini, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe — are expected to take part in the event.
Zimbabwe’s teams are expected to regroup for the final camp on October 10 and they will be based at Girls High School.
The Zimbabwe Handball Federation secretary-general, Edson Chirowodza, said the camp will run until the competition starts.
The teams have been having periodic camps for their build-up to the tournament and the coaches believe they have covered most of the groundwork.
Under-18 team coach Alan Mandeya said heading into their final camp, they want to work on the mental strength of the players.
“The focus area for our camping right now is more to do with mental strength because we now have the combinations, we understand each other, now we want to have more to do with the accuracy of playing, the understanding of playing the match.
“If you are a coach you need to have players who understand the wave of the game, sometimes you don’t need to tell them what to do or to give them an instruction, they need to adjust.
“So we are going to do more with the mental ability of the players, the mental ability of the team. And understanding that we are playing at home, there is a lot of pressure which is coming with the support, just being at home. So we need to have their mental strength at the right position,” said Mandeya.
Under-20 coach Cephas Mushati said they just need continue polishing up.
They have had some friendly matches with local clubs.
“The combinations are definitely coming up. Actually we had a friendly against Manyame club and I can say the combinations are coming up. So we are confident, we have already identified some of the combinations.
“We are almost there, we are now confident. Of course, we need to continue polishing up,” said Mushati.
The regional tournament is the first qualification stage for the World Junior and Youth Cup expected to take place in 2023.
The winners from the tournament advance to the continental showpiece that will precede the global event. Chirowodza said they stand a good chance of progressing to the continental tournament, which will determine the teams to proceed to the World Cup.
“Our teams have had enough preparations and both teams have high chances for qualifying by the tournament time.
We had a long list of 28 players and we will be having our final 14 which can make it to the finals. “We have high chances considering that all the countries in these age-groups are at the same level. They were all affected by Covid and there is no team that has played before. So l believe we stand a great chance playing at home and having had more periodic camps,” said Chirowodza.
The fixtures are expected to be out next week. “The fixtures must be ready early next week as IHF are finalising team registrations some countries like Botswana and Mozambique had not met the tournament requirements and we are regularising with IHF,” said Chirowodza.
In their last appearance at the regional tournament, the Under-18 team got a bronze medal and the Under-20 side finished fourth.
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