13 Jul 2024

Botswana Tennis Association (BTA) held its first national tennis coaches conference in Gaborone on Friday to drill coaches on new expertise and information. Speaking in an interview, BTA vice president technical, Nonofo Othusitse said the course was attended by coaches from across the country as some of them have qualified a long time back. “We felt the need to have a forum where we can gather all our local coaches at different levels of coaching and background across the country and the idea is to empower them in terms of continuous education and development,” he said. He said the conference was also spurred by among others, the latest development in tennis, where coaches would soon be required to be licensed rather than the current arrangement where they only needed certification from International Tennis Federation. Othusitse said the new arrangement by ITF would ensure better quality of coaching, which he said would hopefully reflect in better performance by players. He said after the conference, they intended to appoint a referees commission which would be responsible for ensuring proper licensing and address issues and challenges that affected coaches, and come with solutions that affected them. Othusitse emphasised how important it was for local coaches to keep educating themselves on new coaching technique. “We do not want a situation where a coach qualifies and ten years down the line they do not have any refresher course to gain new information and knowledge in terms of the latest technology or expertise. Learning should be a continuous process,” he said. He also said bringing together coaches from different backgrounds would further afford BTA an opportunity to get feedback from them, and share among themselves any challenges they faced in their careers and how to overcome such. Othusitse said coaches were pooled from areas such as Francistown, Maun, Orapa, Serowe and Palapye as well as the greater Gaborone area. He said the plan was also to make the conference an annual occurrence. “We will be discussing different issues on an annual basis, and to keep the momentum going, we are also planning regional workshops, with the conference being the bigger forum,” he said. He said also found the need to invite some active players for the conference as some of them doubled up as coaches, which he said was handy as it assisted smooth transition for those who wanted to retire into caching. He said after the conference, they would also develop a code of conduct for coaches. Ends