BOTESSA teams leave for Taipei
Naledi Lemogang | Tuesday August 15, 2017 16:13
The games, scheduled for the city of Taipei from August 16 to August 30, will see countries compete in athletics, badminton, tennis and table tennis.
Speaking during the official sending off ceremony yesterday, the chief education officer, Jimmy Mathuba encouraged athletes to carry the national principles with them. He said sport has now turned into an industry that creates employment as well as branding the country internationally.
“There is need to emphasise that sport plays a very important role in moulding athletes as well as making them good role models through discipline which is inculcated through sports rules and programmes,” Mathuba said.
He said BOTESSA continues to fulfil their strategic plan, which is to unearth, retain and expose talent at tertiary institution level saying that athletes should use the opportunity to perform their level best. The athletes were selected based on their performance during the 2016/17 BOTESSA national championships
BOTESSA spokesperson, Duncan Segabo said the attendance is mainly to enable students to get exposure at international competitions. He said the competitions would act as morale booster to most of the local athletes to take sport seriously. He said such kind of games produced some of Botswana’s top athletes including Lydia Jele who participated in China 2011, Russia 2013 and Nijel Amos who settled for gold medal in Russia 2013 amongst others.
Meanwhile, BOTESSA is yet to launch a local organising committee for the 2018 Confederation of University and College Sport Association (CUCSA) games. Segabo said they are still working on finalising the committee so that they start preparing for the games.