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Sikhumbuzo Moyo, Senior Sports Reporter
The 15th edition of the revised and rebranded Zimbabwe National Youth Games get underway next week with games in the country’s 1 963 wards that will lead to the National Games proper set for Matabeleland North in August.
The national sporting extravaganza will run from August 17-27 with Hwange being the nerve centre in terms of the main village as well as the availability of many sporting facilities compared to other districts in the province.
The rebranded games will now have 22 sporting disciplines and will for the first time involve members of the uniformed forces as well as tertiary institutions who will compete in the Under-23 category.
The new sport codes are rowing, swimming, rugby, hockey, rowing cricket, pool, chess, darts, gymnastics, weightlifting, martial arts, cycling, table tennis, traditional games, in addition to the generic football, basketball, handball, tennis, volleyball, boxing, athletics and netball.
According to the Sports and Recreation Commission acting director general Joseph Muchechetere, ward level games will run from June 18-25 and will mainly be for the community clubs who will also be expected to come up with the best talent from those clubs to compete at constituency level.
Dates for constituency level competitions have been tentatively set for June 29 to July 2 involving all the country’s 210 constituencies.
“In terms of other platforms, that is the defence forces. They would have their platform of selecting the best talent at district level and this is in line with the distribution of army camps to determine their own competition so they may start at district level. The same applies to the tertiary institutions, some districts don’t have universities so they will also start at their level. We then have the vocational training centres which are distributed throughout the country and will also have their competitions at the appropriate level depending on the distribution of their training centres,” said Muchechetere.
The district competitions are expected to be held from July 13-16. They will culminate into provincial teams whose competitions will be on July 27-30.
“From the 10 Under-18 provincial teams mainly from schools, we will have the tertiary institutions making up the 11th province, uniformed (12th), police (13th), prisons (14th) and vocational colleges being the 15th province. We will be looking at about 30 000 athletes for the National Games but the number could go down as we are yet to finalise on a few logistics due to teething problems. We might also spill over to other provinces for some disciplines like swimming where we could come to Bulawayo for the standard pool and Matabeleland South for rowing,” said Muchechetere.
Online Reporter