09 Jun 2014

Young chess players below the age of 16 have commended former chess player, Marape Marape, for investing P5 000 in chess at grassroots level. 


Some of those who gathered at the University of Botswana for a tournament workshop organised by the Botswana Chess Federation (BCF) over the weekend, praised Maripe to have seen it fit to contribute to the development of the game of chess at grassroots level.

One of the young chess players, Waabo Makwati aged nine explained that it was a good thing to see a legend investing his monies in the development of chess.
 Having played chess for the past five years, Waabo said he was happy that chess was one of the growing sports in the country.

The federation hosted two chess events that ran concurrently for the northern and southern regions in Francistown and Gaborone respectively over the weekend.

The Southern Region event was a Youth Chess Tournament that was held at the University of Botswana, with a support received from a former chess player, Dr Marape Marape and was open to all players below the age of 16.

This event was feeding on to the objective of the past youth tournaments that were organised with the aim of increasing activity amongst the young chess players in order to sharpen their chess playing skills.

BCF public relations director, Keenese Katisenge explained during a side interview that Botswana is now adopting the route that has been taken by other African countries like Zambia, where a series of weekly and monthly chess events are held to monitor progress of the players, which has seen Zambia produce strong players with a chess rating of above 2 300.

In an effort to come up with unique ways of promoting the game of chess, BCF also in partnership with the Francistown Spar Supermarket hosted the first Northern Region Chess Exhibition over the weekend.

The exhibition which took form of youth chess players was played in front of Spar-Nzano Mall, Spar-Nswazwi Mall, and Marang Spar.

Katisenge said the exhibition was open to players from all primary schools adding that Spar Supermarket which plans to make the event a monthly engagement, donated chess sets to Moremogolo and Phatlogo Primary Schools after the exhibition. Ends