Under-16s prepare for Partille Cup

Collin Matiza Sports Editor
IT was all work and no play for the national Under-16 boys and girls handball teams at Kwekwe High School at the weekend where they began their preparations for the 2014 Partille Cup to be held in June and July in Gothenburg, Sweden.
The Zimbabwe Handball Federation recently picked the national Under-16 boys and girls teams that will take part in the Partille Cup, which is a youth team handball competition open for both boys and girls of ages 10 to 21 years.
It is held annually since 1970 and organised by a Swede handball club, IK Sävehof from Partille in Gothenburg.

In fact, the Partille Cup is the world’s largest annual team handball cup by number of contestants and the ZHF will once again be sending a number of teams to represent Zimbabwe at this world handball jamboree and they will include the national Under-16 boys and girls sides.
The two sides, which were picked earlier this month by the ZHF, have players who were drawn from six schools – JZ Moyo High School of Matabeleland South, Masvingo’s Danhamombe High School, Muketi Secondary School from Midlands’ Mberengwa area, Harare’s Mufakose 4 High School, Kwekwe High School from Kwekwe and Bulawayo’s Lobengula High School.

And a squad of 34 players – 18 boys and 16 girls – assembled at Kwekwe High School last Friday evening for the first of their periodic weekend training camps leading up to the 2014 Partille Cup which is set to run from June 30 to July 5 in Gothenburg.

The two teams began their preparations for the 2014 Partille Cup in earnest on Saturday and then on Sunday  under the guidance of national coaches Alan Mandeya, Clemence Tauro and Farayi Gwisayi who are all part of the ZHF’s Coaches Commission which is supervising the training camps.

When The Herald visited the training camp on Sunday morning at Kwekwe High School, Mandeya, who is co-ordinating the whole programme, was busy working with the girls team while Gwisayi was taking the boys through their paces.

And one of the three coaches, Tauro, said they were impressed “with what we’ve seen so far from the two sides since they came into camp on Friday evening”.

Tauro said their main aim was to build or come up with a very strong squad by the time the two teams leave for the Partille Cup towards the end of June next year.

“What we discovered as an association is that our preparations for the previous editions of the Partille Cup were not thorough enough and this contributed to our poor showing at this competition. So, we decided that starting from this year, we will have periodic training camps so that come end of June next year, the team or squad will have been perfected.

“We have also asked the Coaches Commission to give us people with the right expertise to come and assist this team in their preparations for the 2014 Partille Cup and for this opening training camp we have the co-ordinator of this whole programme Alan Mandeya, Farayi Gwisai and myself working with the team,” Tauro said.

Mandeya, Gwisai and Tauro are all part of the International Handball Federation’s global coaching course and the first phase of this programme was held in Johannesburg, South Africa, last month where all the three Zimbabwean coaches passed with flying colours.
The second phase of the IHF’s global coaching course is expected to be held in Kenya sometime next year but Tauro said they were putting into practice what they learnt at the opening coaching course in Johannesburg last month during the two-day training camp with the national Under-16 boys and girls team at Kwekwe High School at the weekend.

“At this weekend’s training camp, we were mainly imparting to the kids some of the knowledge that we gained during our the first phase of the IHF global coaching course and I’m happy to say that everything has been going on smoothly.

“If you look at this team or squad that we have in camp, some of the players are good, especially on the boys side, but we have found out that the team members we are having here are from different levels.

“For the girls, we were concentrating on teaching them the basics of handball and we have discovered that some of them need to be perfected and we were doing much of ball work with them and it’s in our next training camp that we hope to teach them more skills.

“But the boys team seem to be a little bit better . . . We’ve done some shooting, defending and fast breaks drills with them and they are catching up very fast unlike the girls,” Tauro said.

He said at their next training camp, they will be working hard on polishing some of the aspects of the players’ game.
“It is our hope that with this programme that we are carrying out, we’ll have at least one training camp per month until June next year. The training camps will be spread to other provinces so that we also expose these provinces to our training camps,” Tauro said.

Meanwhile, Amon Madzvamuse, the ZHF president, paid the national Under-16 boys and girls teams a courtesy call on Sunday at Kwekwe High School where he said his federation would give them all the necessary support during their preparations for next year’s Partille Cup.
“I just I want to tell you that you (the players) are very important people and we are here because of you. You are our future leaders because you will one day in your lives be involved in the running of handball in this country as coaches or administrators.

“I know you are all eager to go and participate in next year’s Partille Cup in Sweden and I can assure you that you will see a lot (of support) coming from the ZHF in your second training camp… We are going leave no stone unturned and we are going to put in a lot of resources into this whole programme, and our aim is for you to bring a gold medal from Sweden next year,” Madzvamuse told the players on Sunday.
The ZHF president was met at Kwekwe High School by the school’s headmaster, Master Shumba, who also pledged their support of the national Under-16 boys and girls teams during their preparations for next year’s Partille Cup.

“It’s always my pleasure to welcome young boys and girls who are very enthusiastic about the game of handball like you and it’s good to see that we have two girls who have come all the way from Muketi Secondary School in Mberengwa and also four boys from Danhamombe… This shows that handball is spreading fast to all the four corners of the country and this is good for the development of the sport in Zimbabwe,” Shumba said.

At next year’s Partille Cup, the national Under-16 boys and girls teams are likely to be joined by Harare’s Girls High School, who have indicated that they would be sending two teams to this event, and Mashrhino, a select side from the Mashonaland West Province.