White City hosts athletics course

Innocent Kurira, Sports Reporter
A HIGH-LEVEL World Athletics (WA) coaching course, which has drawn participants from all of the country’s ten provinces, will get underway at White City Stadium tomorrow.

Over 20 coaches will attend the 14 day Coach Education and Certification System Level 1 course.

Lisimati Phakamile, the National Athletics Association of Zimbabwe (Naaz), director of coaching, talent identification and development said the aim of the course is to upskill coaches with the latest coaching methods.

“The course is going to be covering a lot of practical content and scientific theory and the development of coaching. We are basically getting in to assist in the gathering and identification of talent or nurturing of talent around the country as we try to regroup ourselves and come back to normal competition and normal training after a terrible Covid-19 period that had seen us off for almost three years.

So this course comes at a good time as we try to help coaches get to the latest standards of coaching and development of athletics,” said Phakamile. Phakamile said the only way the country can have representatives at top competitions is when coaches are equipped.

“The goal is always to have athletes qualify for the World Junior Championships, Senior Championships and winning medals at the Olympics. WA has set new standards for qualification which means the competition is getting stiffer in every championship.

It is very noble for us to train courses with the latest scientific ways of trying which we normally say are coach based and science driven,” he said.

WA recently announced the qualification standards for the 2023 World Athletics Championships to take place in Budapest, Hungary, and they have significantly improved the standards in a number of events. – @innocentskizoe.