Para Table Tennis' wait drags on
Kabelo Boranabi | Saturday April 2, 2022 08:49
Para Table Tennis is for persons living with disability and has slight modifications for wheelchair athletes. This form of table tennis was to make a debut locally in an all Para Table Tennis tournament dubbed ‘Para Table Tennis Day’ at the BNYC Hall. However, on Wednesday the BTTA issued a statement announcing the postponement of the one-day spectacle.
“Para Table Tennis Day has been postponed due to unforeseen circumstances to a later date that will be communicated. Sorry for the inconvenience,” part of the statement reads. Contacted for comment, BTTA communications officer, Arthur Kgaswe stated the association was forced to postpone, as the Paralympics Association of Botswana (PASSOBO), a mother body of all sport codes for people with disabilities in Botswana has an event on Saturday. “We had a partnership with an organisation of people with disabilities and something came up from their side so we had to accommodate them,” Kgaswe said, without going into too much detail.
Para Table Tennis was introduced locally in 2017, five years after the AUSC Region 5 inducted it into regional competitions. Botswana made its international debut in 2019 during the AUSC Region 5 games held in Gaborone. Botswana’s only female Para-athlete at the games, Onnetse Isaiah was a national hero after she won a silver medal in the singles as BTTA made its international bow. Since the return of sport activities that were halted by the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2021, Para-athletes had taken a back seat and the Para Table Tennis Day was to be their first competition since 2019. This form of ping-pong had been included regularly in the BTTA one-day tournaments; something that did not happen after COVID-19 disrupted the 2020 and 2021 seasons and the ongoing ping-pong campaign.