26 Sep 2019

The preliminary stages of the annual Botswana Games will take place this weekend at different venues across the country. 

The Group D region, which comprises of Jwaneng, Lobatse, Kgalagadi and the Southern District will congregate in Tsabong. 

In an interview, Team Jwaneng general manager, Refilwe Lebekwe-Banda indicated that they would send four sporting codes of soccer, netball, softball and volleyball. 

“We had planned to also send our basketball team to the elimination stages, but we only learnt about two weeks back that the age limit for basketball had been reduced,” adding that they tried to put a team together, but later realised that it was still too raw to compete, so they decided to pull it out and keep it intact for next year. 

Lebekwe-Banda however, indicated that their main concern was lack of sponsorship for the teams. “We are dealing with about 200 athletes and unfortunately funds from the Botswana National Sports Commission are not enough to adequately cover the preparations, so we appeal to the Jwaneng business community to assist,” she said. 

She said the sponsorship was needed to help teams go into regular camps for better preparations, something she said they currently sporadically do. 

She however, said that despite all the challenges, they were sending a team of promising codes that they were confident would bring positive results from the preliminary stages. 

She said codes such as soccer and netball had been participating in friendly tournaments in the past few weeks to sharpen themselves and that the training camps they held for the past two consecutive weekends, had come in handy, especially in integrating some of the players based at schools of excellence that spend a short time with their teammates. 

She appealed to the Tsabong community to attend the games in large numbers. 

The finals of the games, which are in their sixth edition, will be held in Gaborone in December. Ends