adminSports Correspondent
THE Sports and Recreation Commission has expressed satisfaction over the success of the National Youth Games since their inception in 2003. SRC director sport development, Joseph Muchechetere, said the NYGs were growing from strength to strength each year having started in 2003 with only four disciplines. Athletes are now competing in eight disciplines.
The sporting disciplines include netball, soccer, basketball, tennis, handball, athletics, volleyball and boxing.
Muchechetere, however, said the future drive for the NYGs was now on improving the quality of the games to match world-class standards.
“The NYGs are a key component of our junior high performance programme and this has been shown by the consistency placed by Government to host the games annually since 2003. We started off with four sporting disciplines, but this year we have eight disciplines which show the development of the games.
“However, what we want to improve now is the quality of the tournament,” said Muchechetere.
He said the success of the games had over the years been depicted by its products citing United States of America-based sprinter, Ngonidzashe Makusha and World Boxing Council international welterweight champion, Charles Manyuchi.
Up-to-date Makusha who gained fame through the NYGs is the national record holder over 100m and long jump for Zimbabwe with 9.89s and 8.40m respectively.
Both records were set during the 2011 National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I Championships in Des Moines, Iowa, USA.
Manyuchi is a NYGs four-time gold medalist, having won the boxing medals during the years 2005 to 2008 as a Mashonaland East athlete.
“The success of these games speaks for themselves. Ngonidzashe Makusha and Charles Manyuchi gained mileage from the NYGs and now they are profiling the country out there wherever they are.
“Thai is the intention of these games, to catapult our junior talent to be world-class athletes,” said Muchechetere.
Online Reporter