BTTA prepares for Commonwealth Games
In their quest to further enhance development, Botswana Table Tennis Association ( BTTA) will on the 7th of August hold an U 21 national selections open tournament at the Botswana National Youth Council auditorium in Gaborone. The selection will be used to make up the team that will compete at the upcoming Junior Commonwealth qualifiers billed for Morocco from 1st until 7th September 2021. The association has made impressive strides towards achieving grassroots mass participation across the country. Adding to some of their initiatives, international relations have also been identified as a key proponent to aid development. Recently, three young athletes were awarded scholarships in India where they will also enroll in high level table tennis set ups to enhance their development. Speaking to this publication, BTTA president, Tiro Motswasele stressed the importance of development as Botswana looks to challenge and bridge the gap on some of the top ranked African countries. “In Southern Africa we are ranked third and at junior level we have been able to compete better against the likes of South Africa and Nigeria, which are top ranked countries. This has given us motivation to be highly active on issues of development and engagement of young players. We have embarked in a pilot project where we made donations to crèches in different parts of the country to promote early childhood participation in the game,” Motswasele said. Hosting sports tournaments in the era of Covid- 19 has proved to be a challenge to most local sporting activities, both physically and financially. Phoniex Assurance Group Botswana last year injected P90 000- 00 into table tennis for senior tournaments.
Former player and now the President of the Association, Motswasele added that, “it is expensive to host tournaments, we have to pay officials, umpires, SHE officers and venues where we host our events. This is very costly, unfortunately, Phoniex Assurance deal only sponsors senior teams. Before the outbreak of Covid- 19, some companies showed interest to help us when it comes to development and youth tournaments but they have since pulled back.”
According to Motswasele, most of their athletes are undergraduates, who are stretched financially as they have to pay for Covid- 19 tests and also registration to participate in the tournament. He further highlighted that, it is not only to focus on youth development but also to capacitate administrators and coaches with necessary skills to advance the local game.
“Botswana is doing very well, in officiating we are so advanced that we have level II and level I qualified coaches which allows them to coach anywhere in the world. In addition to the scholarships that we have secured abroad, we will soon have short courses for our administrators too,” he concluded.