South Africans excel at Karate League
Calistus Kolantsho | Monday February 28, 2022 16:00
The cadet junior team head coach, Morgan Moss told Sport Monitor that last year his team was not able to travel to Egypt for the African Championships due to the Omicron virus. “A decision was taken to allow the team to be here to compete and test themselves at a high level. We did good, winning six gold, five silver and four bronze medals.
I am happy with the progress but there is a lot of room for improvement. Some of them were fighting outside South Africa for the first time,” he said. For his part, Ofentse Bakwadi said most of the karatekas were rusty but the tournament went well. “My team did fine, but surely we need to improve. We just started training two weeks ago. We are going to put in more work and prepare for the next event. We intend to turn our fortunes around,” he said. Bakwadi said he was impressed by the competition that was brought by the visiting team from South Africa.
The BOKA League provides local karatekas with competitive opportunities to compete at the highest level. The league is presented in an open format. BOKA president, Tshepho Bathai said this allows any athlete from across the world to compete. “We have introduced two open karate championships that we want to affiliate them to UFAK and World Karate Federation (WKF).
The tournaments are Kgari Sechele and if things go well, it will be affiliated to WKF next year. The Botswana Open, which will be introduced at the end of the year, will be affiliated to WKF Premier Leagues,” he said. Bathai said in between they have championships that would be hosted by Federations and they form part of the BOKA League.
He explained that points are used to select the national team and that means all national team members would always be active. He said at the end of the year, they announce another team depending on the points. “Previously we selected one or two people per category, and such people will not compete the whole year because they are sure of their presence in the national team. These activities will bring excitement to our potential sponsors and the general public,” he said.