09 Nov 2015

Mining and construction equipment manufacturer company Komatsu celebrated a 25 good years of partnership with Southern Chops Sports association (SCSA) sponsoring the Komatsu SCSA tennis development tournament.

Seven private schools participated in the Under 10 tournament which was held at the Notwane tennis courts over the weekend in Gaborone. The tournament hosted about 105 Under 10 school children.

Baobab school emerged with the most medals amassing a total of six medals with two golds and four silver followed by Thornhill, Tlokweng day spring, Northside and Legae schools with three medals while Crescent school won two medals.

Shelton Benzah the spokesperson of Botswana Tennis Association (BTA) commented that though the schools were awarded medals, the order of the day was not about competition but developing young ones as far as tennis is concerned.

Benzah who also presides as the treasurer of SCSA heaped praises on Komatsu whom he labelled as the heroes of tennis in Botswana. 

“We are happy to announce that we had a very healthy 25 years relation with Komatsu who have been funding us to run this project,” he said.

He explained that Komatsu funded them with P110 000, of which 70 per cent of the money is diverted to development project. Benzah said before they could afford to train only three children per school.

However Benzah announced that Komatsu have really gone an extra mile helping them with the project. More importantly, he pointed out that the development tournament is for affirmative action. 

He said it is for the empowerment of the girl child hence they have adopted the idea of selecting a bigger number of girls than boys.

“The idea was to get the girl child into tennis because they are the ones who are faced with more challenges than boys,” he said. 

He said alone on the Saturday event out of 15 children  selected 10 girls were chosen to participate.

Benzah further said they have now concluded to cover more by extending the development project outside the private school. 

He said they have now ear marked the SOS children village in Tlokweng to include them. 

He also praised and applauded Freedom Tapera, a tennis coach for SCSA who has been contributing to the development as a coach for almost 10 years now. 

“Tapera has been working with the association for a good 10 years, imagine how much impact he has brought into the project.”

For his part Tapera said it has been a good journey for him, reciting how he used to get to meet with the children at Baobab school. 

However he said the project has immensely grown because he is going around private schools coaching a good number of young aspiring athletes.

“The good thing is this development is helping the girl child, it is promoting the girls to keep with the sport even when they are in their teenage years,” he said.

He confidently described tennis sport in Botswana a winner, saying if such contributions are made a lot can be reaped from the sport. Tapera notes the likes of Tshegofatso Tsiang who is currently at a high performance centre in Pretoria, South Africa.

“Tsiang is my product. I taught her from a tender age until she got where she is,” he said. He explained that the talent in Botswana needs to be nurtured as the results are the testament of that, having graduated a lot of athletes who represent the country at national level. Ends