Poor start for Botswana in regional tennis tourney

Amaury De Beer of South Africa and Madagascar' s Andritoavina Ratsimandresy contest their semi final clash during the on going ITF/ CAT Southern Africa Championships yesterday. PIC: KABO MPAETONA
Amaury De Beer of South Africa and Madagascar' s Andritoavina Ratsimandresy contest their semi final clash during the on going ITF/ CAT Southern Africa Championships yesterday. PIC: KABO MPAETONA

Botswana remains hopeful of qualifying for the Africa Junior Championships (AJC) despite an underwhelming performance thus far in the ITF/CAT Southern Africa Zonal Championships.

In the first round, which comes to an end today, Botswana is still battling to qualify under the new points system. The second round kicks off tomorrow at the Notwane Tennis Club. Points accumulated at the end of the tournament on Saturday will be tallied to decide qualifiers for the AJC to be hosted by Tunisia in March.  Botswana Tennis Association (BTA) secretary general, Boikobo Gaolebalwe said local players gave an average performance in the first round.

“Our players gave an average performance. We had 19 players and we had the last player dropping out from the semi-finals. There are many factors that contributed to our poor performance,” Gaolebalwe said. The tournament has attracted 115 players from South Africa, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Lesotho, Swaziland, Angola, Madagascar, Mauritius and Mozambique. It is divided into three categories, Under-12, 14 and 16.

Editor's Comment
Congratulations Anicia Gaothuse!

The contest had 10 beautiful young girls as finalists and unfortunately only one could wear the crown.The judges picked Anicia Gaothuse. To all those who feel their contestant should have won ahead of Anicia for whatever reason, hardly; the judges found Anicia to be the best among the best, so desist from disrespecting our newly crowned queen on social media or anywhere else, for that matter! Each of the 10 beautiful young women had supporters...

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