adminEllina Mhlanga Sports Reporter
NATIONAL chairperson of the Zimbabwe Handball Federation, Senzeni Bushe, said they are ready to host the first edition of the Women President’s trophy starting today at Houghton Park Primary School.This is the inaugural event for the women’s competition which has been previously held together with the men’s event. The move came after most women’s clubs failed to attend the event held in Bindura in April and the national association decided to reschedule the women’s competition in an effort to give them enough time to prepare and accommodate them as they seek to create equal opportunities for both men and women’s development.
The teams were expected to be at Girls High School yesterday which is the command centre ahead of the competition starting this morning.
Bushe said they appreciate the move by the local handball motherbody as it will promote the development of women and she indicated that they are going to use the competition to select national teams.
“We are going to have the games at Houghton Park Primary School grounds and so far we are expecting 40 teams. We changed the venue because of the number of teams, we were supposed to be at Belvedere Technical Teachers College.
“I am expecting a marvellous tournament and hopefully we will have team selection for the women national teams that is the Under-20 and the senior teams.
“We are going to categorise the teams, we will have the Under-20 and the clubs. Our purpose is to create a catchment area for the community and also develop women in the sport since we have had many men’s teams going to represent us in most events,” said Bushe. Bushe said they are happy with the progress women are making and the participation has been improving with more clubs coming in to compete.
“It has really improved this time around. I can say for the past three years we have been improving, we used to have five or so clubs but this time we have 40 teams,” said Bushe.
Some of the clubs expected to compete in this weekend’s event are Black Panthers from Bulawayo and Black Rhinos from Harare who both have been in the sport for quite some time and the latter side’s coach, Thembani Nkala, said they are ready to compete.
“I can say our preparations have been good and we are going to try as much as we can so that we win although we will be trying some of our new players. This is the first time for the women but our guys have been competing every year. For the girls, we won’t expect much but we have two or three girls who have the experience. First I will aim for the semi-finals and see what we can do from there,” said Nkala.
Nkala said they welcome the move by the national federation to have a tournament targeting women only.
“This is a good move because the problem was the highest level the girls were competing were the (National) Youth Games but this time we are trying to push them a step further so that they go and play for the clubs in their provinces. We are trying to promote the girl child in handball,” said Nkala.
Other teams expected to participate are Girls High School, Serima from Masvingo, Belvedere Teacher’s College, Northlea High, Morgan Zintec College and two Zambian Clubs that were expected to arrive in Harare yesterday.
Online Reporter