Women boxing tournaments in BOBA’s wish list
B o t s w a n a B o x i n g Association( BoBA) remains positive that their idea of introducing women’s tournaments will succeed in future despite failing to kick off since it was adopted three years ago. The motion was adopted by the association in 2017 with the main purpose of empowering women in boxing. The motion was approved by boxing affiliates in 2017 as a way of addressing low turnout of women boxers during interclub tournaments.
BoBA interclub tournaments have failed to attract a sizeable number of ladies’ bouts, something that has made it a hard task for the boxing governing body. According to BoBA mouthpiece, Taolo Tlouetsile, they have failed to execute the plan due to some challenges.
“The challenges of this particular initiative are so many and things are not going as we anticipated but that does not mean it’s impossible to achieve the dream of staging the proposed tourney.
As we speak our interclub tournaments haven’t received an overwhelming number of boxers, so we are still able to accommodate both male and female bouts in one day. But we still want to have women tournaments only in future because our desire is for women boxing to grow, with new boxers coming in,” said Tlouetsile. Even at the national team level women boxers comprise a smaller fraction of the team since only three ladies have made it to the squad in the past major tournaments. While national team boxers Aratwa Kasemang and Keamogetse Kenosi fight in the same weight category at local level, at the national team setup they feature in different divisions, evidence of disparity in weight divisions.
“At the moment we have a good number of boxers but the challenge is that they fall in different divisions which makes it difficult during bouts.
You will find one lady in one weight division while some categories have many pugilists so they end up lacking opponents to fight during tournaments,” explained Tlouetsile. Tlouetsile further, said they are not interested in improving the sport from inside the ring only but also from the technical side. “We also want the ladies’ division to grow outside the ring when it comes to coaching such that by the time we separate ladies and men, we will have fullyfledged women coaches who will lead women boxers during fights,” he said.