ZOC hold admin course

IN a development that is expected to equip team managers from various national sport associations with the skills to carry out their duties, the Zimbabwe Olympic Committee will this this week hold a three-day sports administration course in Harare.

The course, pencilled to start tomorrow and end on Sunday, will be held at the National Olympic Committee’s headquarters in Belvedere.

In a statement released by ZOC yesterday, the course is meant to help team managers understand their roles and what to expect at various competitions.

“This course is being held for team managers from national sport associations. In its most recent interaction with team managers for the Rio 2016 Games, ZOC noted specific gap areas that it now seeks to address through its intervention.

“The presenters of the course will address the managers whose responsibility is ultimately athlete welfare at an event, competition or games mission. The focus will be based on best practice, experience and ultimately imparting knowledge to the managers as to how to handle team related issues more effective,” read the statement.

The presenters include ZOC chief executive, Anna Mguni, and Titus Zvomuya, who was Team Zimbabwe’s chef de mission at the Rio Olympic Games.

Mguni will make a presentation on the Olympic background, a topic under which she will would talk about the Olympic values and relationship between the National Olympic Committee, international federations and national federations on the first day of the course.

The ZOC chief executive will make another presentation on the second day on management of activities, which covers the planning of a sport trip and organising an event.

Zvomuya will look at management skills. He is expected to cover issues to do with leadership, problem solving and managing conflicts.

Other topics include governance and key roles, developing elite athletes – talent identification and antidoping as well as management of resources.

Twenty-five participants drawn from different national sport associations are expected to take part in the course.

Meanwhile the Sports Commission will also hold a sports administration course on September 22 to 23 at their offices at the National Sports Stadium.

Acting provincial sports co-ordinator for Harare province, Percyledge Samugadza, said some of the issues to be covered by the course is the establishment of functional structures from the lower level by national associations.

“Actually the current situation with most associations is they have structures at provincial level and national level only.

“The drive is to have them go back to their associations and cascade down their programmes to ward level.

“The Minister of Sport, Makhosini Hlongwane, highlighted this and that we have to convene such courses, so that we can capacitate the administrators to try and push them to have structures at the lower level where sport starts.

“Basically, we are going to do a follow-up on national sport associations to see whether they have put structures at lower level,” Samugadza said.

Samugadza said they are also going to look at national programmes such as the National Paralympic Games, National Youth Games and the Youth Education through Sport programme that are run by the Sports Commission.

Registration for the course is underway with participants expected to pay $40 and this covers lunch (for the two days), stationery and certification.