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Zimpapers Sports Hub
NATIONAL Athletics Association of Zimbabwe will be hoping their efforts to ensure competitions and athletes are handled by qualified officials and coaches pay off following two courses held recently in Harare.
The local athletics mother body held the Technical Officials Education Certification System (TOECS), and the Coaches Education and Certification System courses at Prince Edward School with the former attracting more than 100 participants.
Thirty-five coaches attended the coaching course. NAAZ president Tendayi Tagara said the idea is to have at least a qualified coach for each school.
The athletics body also want to have qualified officials organising and handling competitions.
“The objective of these courses is to prepare our athletes mentally and make sure the calibre of officials they meet here are at the same level to those they will meet when they go to international competitions.
“To us it’s important that our athletes are handled by qualified officials.
“Our target is to train at least about 1 000 coaches this year.
“Our vision is to have at least one qualified coach per school. It’s a mammoth task . . . we still have a long way to go. But the earlier these athletes are handled by qualified coaches and officials the better for us. And we hope that they will perform well in the long run,” said Tagara.
Tagara added they are pleased, NAPH and NASH are also turning to qualified officials for their competitions.
The TOECS course was facilitated by World Athletics qualified lecturers Enias Nhoro and Mirirai Madhaka while Lisimati Phakamile took charge of the coaching course.
“We feel that provinces are responding well to this officiating course, we had more than 100 participants from all the 10 provinces.
“And it means we have got qualified officials as we move on.
“I observed that there were certain differences that we had in officiating in our provinces because from the interactions that we had you would find that people were interpreting the rules differently.
“This group gave us a positive indication that when they go back, they are actually going to implement the correct thing,” said Madhaka.
Phakamile urged the coaches to impart the knowledge gained when they go back to their respective provinces.
“I want to challenge them all not to go back and sit or relax and say they are now CECS coaches.
“But we are saying let them go out there and practise the coaching because coaches mature with practise, coaches mature with a lot of training and competition,” said Phakamile.
“The World Athletics has designed a new system of coaching, which is basically the online coaching system.
“It requires that all coaches that are participating online meet an international lecturer and they should meet in Harare, specifically for Zimbabwean coaches. And this is one of the courses.
“It is a very interesting course because we had also amongst us former top athletes such as Jane Makombe.
“The course is all about equipping the school teachers, the aspiring coaches from different clubs with the latest scientific knowledge of coaching.
“The new methods of planning of training sessions, implementing training sessions and delivering training sessions to athletes.”
The coaches were mainly drawn from Harare, Manicaland, Mashonaland East and Mashonaland Central provinces.
Online Reporter