09 Aug 2016

The World Netball Youth cup Africa qualifiers recently held in Gaborone have been described as a learning curve for Botswana Netball Association (BONA).

Botswana hosted eight countries  during the Africa qualifiers in July which saw three countries; South Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe qualifying for the world netball youth cup 2017.

In an interview, BONA president Tebogo Lebotse-Sebego said with the qualifiers put to bed, attention has now shifted to the prestigious event, the world netball youth cup in 2017. 

Lebotse-Sebego said the association was ready to host the historic event. 

“We are going to manage a lot of expectations from different people, therefore you need to know exactly what those expectations are and it would have not been a wise thing not to learn about those,” she said

She thus pointed out that the qualifiers provided such a platform saying they now have an idea of what to expect for the big event.

“We have learnt about issues of process management in terms of decision making and alliance of command. They may seem like minor things, but some countries especially from the west are very particular with such,” said Lebotse-Sebego.

BONA president said even though they were on the right track, the local organising committee was still faced with challenges of finding volunteers as the requirement is that even those who will be volunteering should have a small background on netball.

In terms of having a good number of venues, she said other than the UB indoor sports arena they had also identified Ditshupo Hall to host some world cup matches.

“We intend to convert Ditshupo hall to mimic an indoor arena. It is about putting the right floor, stands and demarcating the offices. We have previously pitched the idea to International Netball Federation (INF) during their bidding and they approved,” she noted.

She also said they intend to run a three day test next year around July to see how long it takes to put all the demarcations in place. 

She said countries like England, Australia and New Zealand had seen the hall, even though thye were sceptical about the whole idea they were keen to see how it would all pan out.

Lebotse-Sebego pointed out that INF had taken to use junior events to empower smaller countries.

With regard to affording enough training grounds for all the teams, Lebotse-Sebego was of the view that it had been an issue of contention for them.

However, she said countries would have to embrace the state of netball in Botswana adding that even though netball was an indoor sport, it was not a requirement for the host to provide indoor training grounds.

She explained that there were few indoor grounds that would be secured alongside the available outdoors ones which teams could use.

“Countries like England came and insisted on a floor but ended up playing in an outdoor court, and they were happy with it,” she said.

She also mentioned that African countries would love it, because most of them were used to that. 

She said it would be nice for western countries to feel how netball was played in Botswana.

She noted that it would afford them an opportunity to feel the challenges netball was subjected to in Africa. Ends