Chronicle Editor
Innocent Kurira, Sports Reporter
WHEN the Balanda Primary School gymnastics team from Bubi district in Matabeleland North province won the provincial competition in Victoria Falls in early 2020, it marked a remarkable achievement by a small rural school.
The learners were supposed to represent the province in the national finals in Marondera but Covid-19 struck and their dreams of testing themselves against the best in the country hit a snag.
Although being crowned Matabeleland North provincial champions was a huge feat, it was literally a dream for the boys and girls from the remote village of Balanda to travel to Marondera.
The journey to Victoria Falls was their first time ever to visit a city and their excitement was palpable when they heard that they would represent Bubi in the provincial finals.
However, according to their coach Tyrone Mazarira, their joy turned to tears of anguish after the Bubi district schools’ leadership informed Balanda that its gymnastics team was too small to travel to Victoria Falls and would be left behind as a way of cutting costs.
Mazarira said the children wept after being told the news and although he comforted them, he too was deeply hurt by the snub, especially after beating a school that had been at the national finals in 2019 in the Bubi district competition.
He said disappointed by the decision to leave the talented children behind, their headmaster ran around seeking sponsorship for the team while parents gathered the little they had and sold goats and chickens, and some donated their earnings from gold panning.
Everything came together and they gathered enough resources for the gymnastics team to travel to Victoria Falls to showcase raw rural talent.
Sightseeing in the city of Victoria Falls at the provincial finals gave them the zeal and made them hungrier for success. But their celebrations of being crowned provincial champions again brought more agony for the children, as they were robbed of the opportunity to see the larger cities of Bulawayo and Harare on their long journey to the national finals in Marondera. The first national lockdown was imposed at the end of March last year, just two days before Balanda Primary’s gymnastics team was due to travel to Marondera following an outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The children were denied what would have been a memorable journey.
Mazarira says what hurts him the most is that he will never be with this particular group of champions again.
“Unfortunately, most of these children are now over the age of 11, which is the limit for this competition. The most painful part about this is that as their trainer I ended up transferring to another school in Inyathi, meaning the dreams of that community have been shattered because I believe they were going to do well in the national finals,” Mazarira told Chronicle Sport.
Covid-19 has cast a gloomy picture on the future of schools’ sports in Zimbabwe and schools’ authorities are raising concern about what impact this will have in future. National Association of Secondary Schools Heads president Arthur Maphosa is concerned about the behaviour of children, who are just faced with school work with no extra curriculum activities.
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