27 Feb 2020

A team of 32 out of school volleyball players are on camp to hone their skill ahead of the AUSC Region 5 Youth Games billed for Lesotho in December.

In an interview on Wednesday, Botswana Volleyball Federation (BVF) vice president, Odisitse Keotsene said the federation plans to tighten its development structures to ensure that they released players later to be absorbed into the national teams. The camp, which commenced on  February 17, is expected to end on March 1 and attracted 22 males and 10 females.

“We had 28 ladies and 20 men to train, but we ended up having only 10 ladies availing themselves, while some could not honour the call due to social commitments, including school,” he said.

The team is under the tutelage of Brazilian Augusto Sabbatini, assisted by Agisanang Kurwana, Peaceful Seleka, Francis Dingwe and Kagiso Mannaesi, who are all development coaches.

The teams have two hours 30 minutes training sessions twice a day.

He, however, said the federation would have other training sessions during school holidays to compensate for the time missed while at school.

The vice president, technical, said they chose to start training prematurely to avoid pressure when it was already time for the competitions.

“Players do not perform well under pressure, and pressure breeds fear and a lot of accidents during major games, hence we are working on teaching them all the basics now,” he said.

He said resources allowing, they were planning to have more of such trainings, and even rope external trainers to help the players.

Keotsene said the players were all on trial and could be dropped anytime if need be to replace them with better and more focused players.

“Our mother body, Federation Internatioanale de Volleyball (FIVB), has projects that handles projects, and on a yearly basis members appeal to the committee on intended projects. This year we applied for assistance with regards to development training, and we were furbished with a list of coaches who sent their curriculum vitaes’ and we chose the one we needed,” he said.

Keotsene said Sabbatini possessed a strong component of developmental know how and would be of great assistance to the team.

Reached for comment, Sabbatini said it was a good time for the federation to think about the future of the national team by training young ones at a tender age.

Having been a volleyball coach for the past 29 years, and having coached Brazil for 15 years, Sabbatini said he had the much needed experience about development since he had worked with the best teams before.

He said he had observed that laxity on physical education teachers was a setback.

“The technical aspect of volleyball in schools is very poor. Teachers need new philosophy because technical, physical and development aspects are all essential in the life of a volleyball player,” he said.

He said the players were zealous and passionate about the sport but lacked technical aspects which was always going to drive them backwards, if not attended.

Although Sabbatini expressed delight to be in Botswana to assist the teams, he quizzed why Botswana was not utilising the abundant development coaches in the country.

“I have been given development coaches to assist me with the training, to my surprise, they are one of the best coaches I have seen and worked with, they can do a better job even in my absence,” he said.

He added that while it was not wrong to employ foreign coaches, it was not necessary when the country had their own who could be tasked with preparing teams for major events.

Sabbatini further said there were good volleyball facilities in Botswana, and what was lacking was adequate planning and sustainable finances.

“There is plenty of work to be done with these young ones, and countries I have been to have a tendency of letting everything fall back after my departure, and I hope that does not become the case here because there is a lot of potential,” he said. ENDS