Online Reporter
Lovemore Dube, [email protected]
FOR years, Bulawayo Metropolitan and Matabeleland North have anchored the National Association of Secondary School Heads (Nash) Track and Field Championships, log standings but that is set to change this year.
Cain Ncube, the chairman of the metropolitan province, who is also the headmaster of Sobukhazi, a school famed for producing great soccer players, said they have taken necessary steps to ensure Bulawayo is among the top provinces.
In the past decade, Bulawayo athletes have found themselves finishing in the bottom three in log tables drawn after every national competition.
Yet at one stage, Bulawayo was a fiery competitor with student athletes like Caroline Ncube, Tatenda Goronga, Lewis Banda, Nelton Ndebele, Marvin Bonde, Elvis Mzamo, Sikhulile Sibanda, Xolani Nkiwane, Ishmael Nyandoro and Nobuhle Ncube.
Ncube was at White City Stadium on Sunday for the second event of a series initiated by Nash in Bulawayo. The idea is to come up with a strong team for the inter-provincial championships.
It has been observed in the past that Bulawayo athletes and those from Matabeleland North would not have had enough competition going into the national finals.
To counter history, secondary schools in Bulawayo last year agreed to have a series of athletics competitions ahead of the March 4-5 provincial finals.
Ncube is happy with the response and spent the whole of Sunday watching athletes endure the hot weather conditions trying to impress.
“We decided to have a change in our way of doing things as far as athletics is concerned, we are going to have a number of selection series and we started last year on the 12th of December,” said Ncube.
After Sunday’s leg of the series Ncube said they are looking at slotting another one before the provincial finals.
He said the inter-district championships will also be used as party of the selection process as they want a strong team for the province.
“There will be selection during inter-district finals, we are going to see if we can slot another competition,” said Ncube who made Sobukhazi a powerful athletics force.
Ncube expressed disappointment that some schools are not sending athletes to the event.
“Some schools are still not forthcoming, they seem not to understand what this is all about, we hope sports directors will soon understand,” said the provincial secondary schools athletics boss.
Ncube said this year, there will be a change in fortunes as Bulawayo will be among the top provinces.
“This year, we want to turn things around and perform better than in the past,” said Ncube.
There were some good performances in the sprints and long distance events at the weekend.
Meanwhile, on the global stage Denzel Simusialela lies 68th in the indoor rankings with a time of 6.64 seconds in the 60m dash.
In the indoor 200m, he improved his January 9 time of 21.06 seconds when posting 20.93 seconds to lie 18th best in the world.
Zimbabwe’s case for the 4x400m relay received a boost when two athletes last week ran sub 46 seconds 400m in South Africa.
Leeford Zuze clocked 45.62 seconds in an event in South Africa while Denis Hove ran 45.83 seconds.
Zuze is 11th in the world while Hove is 14th.
Vimbayi Maisvoreva is seventh in the world in the women’s 400m with a time of 51.80 seconds.
