adminEllina Mhlanga Sports Reporter
NATIONAL Association of Secondary Schools Heads vice president, Arthur Maposa, said their teams for the Confederation of School Sports Association of Southern Africa ball games to be held in Windhoek, Namibia, are expected to troop into camp on Monday in Bulawayo. The Games will be held from August 28 to September 1 with countries from Southern African region expected to participate.
The Games were initially set for Lesotho but have been moved to Namibia and Zimbabwe will be fielding teams in basketball, football, netball and volleyball.
Maposa said the teams will be based at Founders High School until they leave on August 27.
“The teams will be camping in Bulawayo at Founders High School starting from Monday up to the departure day on August 27.
“We are going there short of two teams — in volleyball we have one team for boys due to financial constraints.
“For basketball we have two teams — boys and girls and netball. Football it’s a girls’ team, we deliberately chose girls because the boys are sponsored by Coca-Cola, they are going to South Africa.
“It’s the same scenario on our Under-13s but they will be missing the basketball teams,” said Maposa. Maposa said they will be hoping to win the title after they finished second in the previous event.
“Last year we did quite well in basketball with the girls getting gold while the boys got silver, we got gold in volleyball boys and the girls got bronze.
“Netball we got silver as well as in girls’ football. It was only in the boys’ football that we did not perform very well as we were knocked out in the group stages.
“Our expectation is that we are going for gold. The challenge we had last year is we did not have our own referees and umpires but this year we are taking them with us.
“It’s a requirement by COSSASA and I believe where we got bronze and silver we will get gold,” said Maposa.
“Basketball coach Simon Lawson said they have called up all their players into camp after holding the selection tournament last week in Masvingo.
“All players that were selected at the 17-and-under tournament we had in Masvingo have been called into camp.
“Some are already in Bulawayo because they are participating in the Youth Games and when the Games end they will join camp.
“During the Games we will make time to incorporate them in training like in the evening,” said Lawson.
Lawson said they faced some challenges during the tournament used to select the teams as most of the players had already gone for the holidays since schools were closed early to pave way for the harmonised elections.
“Looking at the competition we had it was kind of not so good because usually we have this tournament the last week before schools close so some of the provinces did not bring their best players but yes we have talent,” said Lawson.
The COSSASA Games are an annual event and Zimbabwe had the opportunity to host the athletics competition in May as the event is held separately from ball games.
They were crowned champions in that competition and will be hoping for the same performance in Namibia.
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