Botswana hosts first ITF meeting outside SA
Calistus Kolantsho | Tuesday October 23, 2018 15:21
ITF development officer for Southern Africa, Tapiwa Masunga said the biennial conference targets coaches from Southern and Eastern Africa and will be held from October 25 to 27.
“It is the first time that the meeting is held outside South Africa. It is exciting to get it outside and give other Federations an opportunity to build capacity in hosting events not just tournaments. We expect more than 60 coaches who have confirmed their attendance from 15 countries. We have two key note speakers,” she said.
One of the speakers is Michael Ebert from Austria. He is a certified Austrian tennis coach, and PTR-Professional. Ebert is also a Junior Touring Coach (ITF, TE) and an International speaker for children and junior tennis. He is founder and president of the ‘tennis4kids Academy’. Ebert is also the ITF/Tennis Austria Coordinator for ‘Play & Stay’ and ‘Tennis 10s’.
The other speaker is Piotr Unierzyski from Poland. He is a coach, coach educator and researcher. Currently he is a director of coaching at Polish Tennis Association and a member of Tennis Europe Junior Committee.
Masunga said the two speakers would share what they have done for their Federations to increase participation. “The main thing that we have seen as a big problem not just in our continent but the whole world is the low number of women in tennis. At the professional level they are equal but when you come down the participation of women and impacting that they are making in tennis is disappointing and low,” she said.
Masunga said there are few women coaches and the issues bring about child safeguarding.
“You have teams that are traveling but you do not have a woman coach because there are not there. Even at the regional level I struggle to get women coaches who are at level two or higher to travel with touring teams to Europe. The girls’ participation is good when they come from grassroots level then there is major drop when they are to stay in tennis,” Masunga said.
She said at the beginning of the year, ITF has a strategy that cascades to all countries around the world. She said the strategy is backed by development plans that each Federation has. “The strategy started in 2017 and this is our first year of implementation. Federations have submitted their four years strategy. All the activities that we have been running in the region are aligned to those strategies, be it coaching, events, development of facilities as well as programs,” she said.