adminEllina Mhlanga Sports Reporter
THE Zimbabwe Karate Union will this weekend hold the Champion of Champions tournament at Alexandra Sports Club in Harare as they conclude their competitions for this year. The tournament will be their last local competition for this year and is slated for Saturday with participants from the country’s different provinces expected to take part in the 35 categories on offer.
ZKU president, Joe Rugwete said they will be using the event to select teams for regional and international tournaments scheduled for next year.
“We are expecting karatekas from all active provinces and we are determined to do our utmost to bring about the best possible conditions to make this competition a memorable occasion.
“This tournament together with all other competitions provides the technical team with an opportunity to identify talent and to nurture potential talent in preparation for national team representation. For this reason, we expect a high level of competition and an entertaining event.
“We are using this competition to select a team for the Zone Six Championships next year, so it means people will be interested in competing because it will be difficult for us to consider for the national teams people who do not come for these championships.
“Before the Zone Six we have World Championships in South Africa in February and again this is an opportunity to select those who will represent Zimbabwe in the championships,” said Rugwete.
Rugwete said they are happy with the progress they made this year in terms of holding local competition but noted that there is still more that needs to be done.
“This is our last competition for this year. Locally we managed to hold most of the planned events except for the Japanese Cup which the embassy withdrew from sponsoring. We had the inter-provincial, inter-styles and the senior championships.
“The competition we were well prepared for was the World Junior Championships but we failed to go to Spain because of visas.
“However, we have a concern with the full contact karate because we did not hold any local tournament although we had several international events,” said Rugwete.
There is also going to be a referee’s course tomorrow ahead of the actual competition.
Meanwhile, the Karate Union will hold their general meeting on December 14 in Triangle where a new executive will be elected into office as the term of office of the current executive led by Rugwete comes to an end.
The meeting will also see other issues concerning the sport being discussed as they prepare for next year’s events.
The nominees will be contesting for the president, vice president, secretary general and treasurer’s posts.
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