Botswana handball receives international hand up

Dumisani Ncube | Thursday September 18, 2014 11:42

Botswana handball national team coach Harvinder Singh Dhaliwal told Mmegi Sport that IHF is willing to build sporting infrastructures for the Botswana Handball Association (BHA) and supply them with required support to develop the sport.

“IHF has promised to help us develop handball in the country. They even invited us to participate on our first major tournament in Zambia last week” said Dhaliwal.

Already, IHF has started assisting the federation with balls, nets and mats, he said.

Dhaliwal said the IHF support is premised on the BHA working hard to ensure that there are teams on the ground to utilise the infrastructure and backing promised. “It is now up to us, we have to develop the sport so that we impress IHF to help us,” he said.

At the moment, Dhaliwal said there are working on plans to come up with teams that can form up a league. The association has also started training interested individuals on how the game is played.

The coach stated that their main challenge is that handball is still at its infancy in Botswana, and therefore, there was a shortage of players and experience in the game. BHA president Ignatius Onyewadume noted that IHF involvement in the local scene would be a great boost to the association and the handball family at large. He added that they are waiting the approval of the Ministry of Youth, Sport and Culture to introduce handball in schools.

Meanwhile, Botswana handball national team participated in an international tournament for the first time last week when they toured Zambia. The team won one match against Swaziland and lost to South Africa and Lesotho.