Mathethe Sports Festival kicks-off
Oscar Gasennelwe | Thursday July 14, 2022 20:02
The festival, which is the brainchild of former Botswana Football Association (BFA) first vice president, Marshlow Motlogelwa, is held under the theme, ‘Areyeng metshamekong’. Action will continue until Monday afternoon, with the horse race headlining the event.
This year, there are increased sport codes (seven), which include cycling (hamba), football, snooker, marathon 21 kilometres, netball, the newly added tug of war and horse race.
Motlogelwa said the event is meant to unearth talent and increase sport tourism.
“Our main aim is to try and find talent as there are a lot of talented children who are not academically advanced and they could use sport to fall back on. In this competition, we have set a rule that every team must have six Under 23 players and four must be in-field. We often invite scouts and some of our players have been signed by Premier League and First Division clubs,” Motlogelwa said.
“We’re trying to make the festival part of sport tourism. We started with football and netball, now we’re increasing codes annually. We recently brought the volleyball president to our launch as we plan to bring volleyball next year. Looking at the route, we may also bring in quad bikes next year,” he added.
Motlogelwa said they had joined hands with Hatlhogang Community Trust in order to focus on the improvement of festival.
“We’ve partnered with the Hatlhogang Community Trust. They have a big, fenced area, which we are using and spent a lot of money on fixing the ground, which is why we decided to charge P10 for entrance fee in order to recover a bit of costs,” Motlogelwa said.