ZIM TO HOST BASEBALL SERIES

Shingai Dhlamini

ZIMBABWE will play host to a baseball series against South Africa and other Southern Africa countries in December.

The event, will be a follow up to a just ended series hosted by South Africa, who dominated the proceedings.

Several countries from the region have been invited for the tournament.

The Zimbabwe women’s baseball teams are seeking financial help before the second leg of the South Africa-Zimbabwe Ladies Baseball series for the Under-18 and senior teams.

With limited time to prepare for the inaugural edition of the Baseball Region Five World Cup qualifiers, the Zimbabwe baseball teams travelled to South Africa just to participate in the inaugural games.

The team did well and booked itself a place for the Africa World Cup qualifiers after finishing second behind hosts South Africa.

Nyaradzai Marijena who is the Zimbabwe Baseball Association scorer and also a coach said that this was the first ever women’s baseball event which was hosted on the continent and it was a great honour to play against one of the best playing nations in Africa.

“This was the first ever women’s baseball event to be hosted on the continent and we are proud to have taken part in this inaugural tournament.

“Both our teams played second fiddle to South Africa in all our games, we take pride in learning from the best baseball playing nation on the continent,” said Marijena.

The head coach of the senior ladies team Eldon Mudzingwa said that although they lost, the lessons learnt from that tour are important in building their next challenge which is the second leg scheduled for December this year.

“The experience was the best, we gave South African teams a good run and reason for them to come to Zimbabwe for the second leg of the series in December,” he said.

Mudzingwa said that like any other sporting discipline they faced challenges in organising transport and accommodation for other players who could not source for themselves and this was a disadvantage for them.

“We are hoping to have trials across the country for both the Under-18s and the senior teams, this will give us another chance to search wider for talent once again and giving opportunities to all deserving athletes. For that to be successful we appeal to the public and corporates to sponsor us financially so we can achieve our goal of uplifting the Girl Child through sports.

We are faced with a big problem and that is obviously funding. Schools, parents and players have had to fund our activities from camps to tours. At the end it’s not all the deserving players but at times the affording players that end up travelling,” said Mudzingwa.

Mudzingwa said that there will be trials across the nine baseball playing provinces and after the trials the shortlisted athletes will then be called into camp during the month of October.

“After the trials we will take a break to give our examinations candidates time to focus on school, camp will resume towards the December tournament for the under-18.

“For seniors we will have camps in October, November and December. We still working out on the dates,” said Mudzingwa.