adminyesterday with the official opening of the event at Pelandaba stadium.
The actual competition is set to take off today with teams taking part in athletics, basketball, boxing, handball, volleyball, football, tennis and netball.
Matabeleland South are staging the games for the first time.The Games are being hosted by Gwanda and Mzingwane and will end on Saturday.
The eight disciplines will be at various venues with tennis and basketball set for Falcon College while volleyball and handball will be at Mzingwane High School.
Gwanda will host netball at Pelandaba’s multi-purpose sports centre while athletics will be held at Pelandaba stadium.
Boxing will be staged at Gwanda district club, women’s football has been set for Collenbawn and men’s football is at Vumbachikwe and Blanket Mine.
Sports Commission Youth Education through Sport national programme officer Tirivashe Nheweyembwa said all the provinces are ready for the competition.
“All provinces are already in Gwanda. Competition will start tomorrow (today) and Wednesday is the rest day and there shall be a youth conference running under the theme ‘The Role of Sport in
Nation Building’. Each province will make their presentation on what they think is the role of sport in nation building,” said Nheweyembwa.
“We are going to have the Matabeleland South declaration by the young people in line with the theme and this shall be handed over to the Minister of Youth Development, Indigenisation and Empowerment, the idea being that young people would influence on the formulation of policies,” said Nheweyembwa.
Nheweyembwa said they are also going to have a youth leadership camp in which each province will be represented by four athletes between the age of 15 and 17.
The athletes will be taken through a number of issues among them how to organise community sports, gender based violence effects on young people and sports and sport as a career.
The Sports Commission YES programme officer said they are going to have Namatirai Mavugara who won two gold medals in triple and long jump at the 2006 Zone Six Youth Games and Highlanders’ national Under-23 goalkeeper, Ariel Sibanda who are also products of the Game as guest speakers to inspire the youth.
“Namatirai took part in the first three editions of the National Youth Games from 2003 to 2005 representing Midlands province.
“She also participated in the inaugural Zone Six Youth Games in 2004 and won a bronze medal and in 2006 she won two gold medals in triple and long jump.
“In 2007 as a development athlete, she went to Algeria for the All-Africa Games and in 2008 she got a full scholarship to study in the United States and with that background you can see that sport can be a career.
“The rationale of bringing these two is to showcase the value of sport to inspire those young people and they can also learn from their experience that sport indeed can be a career.
“We also want to demonstrate to the corporate world to support us, we have tangible results,” said Nheweyembwa.
Online Reporter