11 Jun 2020

Botswana Volleyball Federation (BVF) president, Daniel Molaodi says volleyball guild will be back on its feet as soon as they secure preliminary contracts.

In an interview on Wednesday, Molaodi said they had embarked on new techniques to look for sponsorship due to the coronavirus pandemic.

“We had no choice but to do things differently and change our strategy. Our chances of securing sponsorship mostly long term, are affected as companies are focused on the COVID-19 relief fund,” he said.

He explained that getting a preliminary contract will put them on a safer side because as soon as the pandemic is over and all is back to normal, they would not have to start over and apply for sponsorship from scratch.

“This type of contract details that we acknowledge that a company cannot financially assist us as now, but once the dust has settled they could, and then we still recognise them as our sponsors,” he said.

Molaodi said they were now also looking for partners to sign up both on short term and long term partnerships.

He said as the federation had not been on its A-game, they were working hard to ensure that when they get sponsorship, they would build the league so as to have a pool of seasoned players.

He explained that they had been relying on schools to groom players for the national teams and the ceasing of sports in schools due to the pandemic, had cripple volleyball.

Molaodi said had it not been for the pandemic, they would have started training the third batch of out of school.

He said they had to engage Botswana Integrated Sports Association and Botswana Primary Schools Sports Association, which had been helping them get students players to work on a way forward.

He added that the youth players who were supposed to attend the Region 5 youth games in Lesotho in December also come from schools, which heightens the profundity of the challenges faced by the federation.

He said they were not yet sure whether they qualify for funding from Ministry of Youth Empowerment, Sports and Culturedevelopment and Federation Internationale de Volleyball.

“We run an amateur league, which mostly consists of students and we may not have played enough games to qualify except for maybe two players, who are likely to get sponsorship,” he said.

Molaodi said as they were still working on this bouncing back, they were happy that their players, who were plying their trade outside the country, were doing well and were well taken care of.

He said they were very happy with the way their teams were treating them.

Reached for comment, seasoned Botswana volleyball player currently in Rwanda on a short-term contract, Thapelo Kamberuka said their league would commence in September. Ends