adminEllina Mhlanga Harare Bureau
TEAM Zimbabwe chef de mission for the African Union Sports Council Region Five Under-20 Youth Games, Chiedza Mafunga says they are expecting all participating national associations to have submitted their preparation roadmaps by end of this month. The Games set for Luanda, Angola from December 9 to 18 will see participants competing in athletics, basketball, boxing, gymnastics judo, and athletics for the visually impaired, football, netball, swimming and tennis.
Mafunga, who was in Angola recently for the chefs de mission meeting met with the national associations on Saturday at the Sports Commission offices in Harare to deliberate on various issues concerning preparations towards the Games.
“We actually had 50 percent attendance on the national associations and with those that were in attendance for the discussion we had quite positive results.
“Issues concerning the entries and number entered for the Region Five Games was the core area of discussion. They (associations) have already made their submissions and yesterday (Saturday) they were submitting their coaches, team managers as well as the team long list.
“We agreed they’ll design their roadmaps in terms of the pathway or route they’re going to follow. This includes training camp, individual training programmes when they’re not in camp and set competitions, that’s competitions they will attend. As well as the final camp in terms of the preparations for these Games.
“The general team manager is going to infuse this and put in place a consolidated plan for the whole team towards our preparations for the Games.
“We did set ourselves a deadline for May 30 for associations to submit their roadmaps, which will be consolidated,” said Mafunga.
Mafunga said they are now looking forward to the participating national associations starting their preparation for the regional competition.
“They’re now supposed to start training for example, netball have started training. They’re in camp for another tournament yet it’s the same age group (going for the Region Five Games).
“What we’re saying is we want to send our best team to Angola. We want to maximise on the numbers we have. In terms of the medals we want to challenge ourselves in terms of the quality of the medals.
“Obviously from the previous posting we had in 2014 we’re looking at those disciplines to improve,” said Mafunga.
In 2014, Zimbabwe, who were the hosts of the Region Five Games came second behind South Africa.
Zimbabwe entered 79 athletes during the initial entry by number early last month for this year’s Games and the final entry by name is in August.
So far indications are that they will take part in nine of the sport codes except for football because of limited resources.
“There are 10 sport codes on offer and we’ve managed to enter obviously restricted numbers in nine of the sport codes. We haven’t entered football. The reason being that of resources, so we picked individual sport codes and on team sports, for the females our netball Under-20 are the defending champions so they’ll be defending their title.
“And on the men’s team we were now looking at the number of the team sport with the minimum number and we picked basketball. So we ended up having to leave football. However, we’re saying there is still room for football.
“From the 79 we’ve entered, our hope is all of them travel. However, our hope also is we should be able to increase the number,” Mafunga said.
The Team Zimbabwe chef de mission said they are still working on the budget for the Games. However, said they are going for a massive resource mobilisation for the event.
Mafunga, who is the Zimbabwe Olympic Committee and Olympafrica coordinator, was the 2014 Team Zimbabwe deputy chef de mission technical.
She will be deputised by Sports Commission director corporate service, Patience Kabanda and Zimbabwe Volleyball Association president, Frederick Ndlovu will lead the technical team.
Online Reporter