Botswana volleyball on the brink of collapse
Calistus Kolantsho | Friday June 9, 2017 15:18
The depressing admission was made by the BVF vice president-technical, George Kootsenye yesterday who said the search is ongoing. He told Mmegi Sport that realistically they are at a point where they may not be able to have a league this year.
He said they are hoping to have at least two more tournaments before the close of the year to keep players active and the interest in volleyball alive.
The blow comes at a time when BVF is assembling national teams for the 2018 World Championships Zonal Qualifiers scheduled for June 25-July 3 in Maputo, Mozambique.
“A reduction in local activities will obviously have a negative impact on the national teams’ performances. Like I already indicated we will probably not have the league as you know it, but we are planning on having a few tournaments to keep the players active and give the national team coaches a bigger pool of players to pick from for our national team engagements this year. In the absence of competitions of course we will have longer and sustained training camps for the current group of players selected in the long list,” he said.
Kootsenye said out of an active national team list of 20 players, only 12 or 14 would make it to the final team going to competitions. So competition amongst players for places in the team will still be there.
Meanwhile, the selection of national teams players has raised eyebrows as some coaches are wondering which criteria was used.
“We want to know how they selected the teams. We want to know the criterion that was used to gauge them.
Some of the players in both teams play for clubs that were knocked out of the Capital Motors tournament, but made the team while some of those who reached the final were left out,” said one coach who preferred to remain anonymous.
He said some clubs have stopped training because they fear spending their resources on training.
Reacting to the complaints, Kootsenye said the Federation has a player selection criterion. He said the selection is mainly made by the national team coaches with input from the Coaches Commission Executive.
“When this current list was first put together at the beginning of the year, teams had just returned from the Zone VI games (six men and two women teams).
After the qualifiers were postponed from March, the selectors were in touch with teams that were already training to monitor players plus the dates for submission was extended so the coaches had an opportunity to watch the players in the just ended tournament and still had the liberty to make changes if any since submission dates were not yet closed,” Kootsenye said.
Meanwhile, women’s team coach, George Leabaneng said the absence of the league has affected the players in bad way. He said they were able to select the team during the Capital Motors tournament even though that was not enough.
“At the moment, we are not sure what to expect because we are yet to assess the players during the camp,” he said.
The final team is expected to be announced in two weeks. At the moment, 21 men and 20 women have received call-ups. Police VI dominate the men’s team with six players while Mafolofolo have seven players in the women’s side.
Tebogo Sejewe, Chada Majaha and Karabo Molefha who are plying their trade in South Africa have been included in the team.
Leabaneng said their intention is to do well at the qualifiers in order to progress to the next stage.
He said they have always done well in the region and this time around they intend to continue with the same trend.
Some of the countries that are expected to be present at the qualifiers are Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Mozambique (host). Leabaneng said countries are yet to confirm their attendance. He added that maybe South Africa would attend the competition.