adminThe decision was made during the executive meeting held on Saturday in the capital for the hand over ceremony, which was also in preparation for a board meeting to be held next month.
There are four competitions for the juniors starting this month with the Youth boys championships set to run from January 20 to February 1 in Algeria and the Junior men championships which will start on February 28 to March 10 in Tunisia.
The Junior women championships will be in Nigeria from March 11 to 20 and the Youth girls championships will be staged in Egypt from March 23 to April 1.
Zimbabwe automatically qualified for the competitions when the Zone Six championships that were meant to act as the qualifiers early this month were cancelled after most member countries failed to confirm their participation.
However, ZVA president, Fredrick Ndlovu said they have decided to take part in two out of the four events due to financial constraints and they are expecting to participate in the Junior men and Youth girls championships to be held in Tunisia and Egypt respectively.
“We are going to pick instead of participating in the four events. For now we are going to provisionally try to prepare for the Junior men and the Youth girls championships. We need US$80 000 and we are still in consultation with all our sponsors,” said Ndlovu. The national association also discussed other issues related to the sport as they map the way forward for this year such as the reduction of registration fees for clubs and to continue with their talent identification programme. We had to agree that all reports should be done by Friday and equipment outside should be surrendered to the new executive.
“We agreed on the reduction of club registration fees to make it affordable for the clubs. Everything will be final when approved by the board. We are going to have the ZVA board meeting on February 2.
“We also discussed the issue of talent identification and development programme. We agreed that we need to bring in more provinces to take part, we need more activity.
“Development is the way to go. We are hoping that in five years time we will start realising the fruits of our efforts,” said Ndlovu.
The ZVA president said in an effort to bring new ideas into the sports they are forming the ZVA Supporters executive which will be made up of former national executive members and players so that they also contribute to the development of the sport.
The meeting was attended by members from the previous executive and the new executive that came into office in December last year.
Online Reporter