Sport admin course in PE
Thirty students take part in 12-month project
ATOTAL of 30 students from Nelson Mandela Bay are part of a sport administration course organised by Safa NMB. The programme, which started this week, is sponsored by Cathsseta and will run for 12 months.
Successful students will receive a national certificate in sport administration.
They will receive a monthly stipend of R2 500 for their participation.
Pumezo Nyamela, from the Exercise and Wellness Academy, is conducting the course and says the aim is to capacitate sport administrators, especially in the area of soccer.
“The course covers a wide range of modules such as fraud in sport, sport events, health and safety, sport administration and we do touch a bit on life skills,” Nyamela said.
“We also look at values, ethics and substance abuse. When you work with athletes, one of the painful things is to find them [taking] drugs, because it destroys their careers.
“They do a lot of theory and practicals, which is why we have Safa NMB as a key partner in the programme.”
He said the students would, on completion, receive a national certificate in sport administration, which was an entry requirement for the industry.
Safa NMB president Monde Mhletywa said the programme was a building block within Safa’s Vision 2022 to become a world-class soccer association.
He said Safa needed people who were trained in administration.
“In the past, people got into positions on the basis of popularity and not necessarily on the basis of knowledge,” Mhletywa said.
“So, this course is giving that knowledge and further gives soccer people a certificate that will enable them to work in high institutions of sport.
“Currently, in Safa NMB we have four people who are working at Safa.
“Looking at the amount of work that is being done, we need more people. That is one of the reasons we said let’s get a group of people that will be trained in administration.
“In the long run, the aim is to absorb them within the association.”
Mhletywa said the aim of the programme was to focus on clean sports administration.
As part of their practical leaning, the students will be divided into groups and spread throughout the 12 local football associations (LFA) in the metro.
“All the LFA leaders must support the students and give them all the information they need,” Mhletywa said.
“Also, they can learn from the students how we want to run things in the metro soccer-wise.”
Luxolo Mlatshisa, 22, of Algoa Park, said the course would help him build his sport knowledge as he is a post-graduate student in sport management from the Cape Peninsula University of Technology.
“After receiving my qualification, I would like to be involved in schools sport. Maybe be a sport coordinator at an elite school,” he said.