Lack of school sports dents Botswana
Country performing badly at AUSC region 5 Games
School sport has unearthed most of our renowned men and women in sports, and for many years it has been the only umbilical cord we had in terms of developing for the future. Since it was cut off back in 2019, there has been deprivation of sport development as well as talent identification.
So far, Botswana is sitting at the bottom of the medal table at the AUSC Region 5 Games hosted in Malawi, Lilongwe, the team is without a single medal at the competitions so far.
Botswana has taken a few athletes to the games with other codes remaining behind this time around and previously, Botswana Volleyball Federation ( BVF) President, Tsoseletso Magang has stressed that the lack of school sport has affected them as they only took players who were active not basing on performance and talent since there was no school sports.
Previously, the Botswana Integrated Sport Association ( BISA) had given local players a bit of exposure and a platform to showcase their talents and players were selected on merit then.
BISA games had a lot of stages from Sub Regions to regions and then Nationals where most of the promising crop of athletes were found, some individual sport codes such as Tennis, Badminton and Table Tennis over 100 single players had to play sufficient games to win gold medal at BISA games.
Although these codes ( Table Tennis and Tennis) have youth tournaments every now and then, they can never get you there or at least replace those games hosted by BISA. The tournaments are always the same 12 players in a category as opposed to BISA where everyone who is talented is involved.
There is no denying that in Southern Africa we are not that far behind, we are only behind SA and Zimbabwe generally, but lack of school sports has affected all