She made history by becoming the first BBA president to complete her reign, unlike her predecessors who resigned. Hardy revealed that she would also not seek re-election for the Botswana National Olympic Committee (BNOC) board position when elections are held next year. “I have made my decision, I am done with that part of my journey. I am a FIBA Africa board member and my dream is to be a FIBA World board member,” she said. Hardy told MmegiSport this week that one of her success stories was the implementation of the 3x3 basketball. “When it was introduced as an Olympic sport in 2020, I was there. I saw the vision and I understood clearly how 3x3 could work for us as a country. When we play against other countries, in the 5x5, we are not up to par. Population wise, in other countries a 5x5 team is drafted from thousands of players whilst here we will have around 60 players showing up for trials,” she said.
Hardy said the other challenge for 5x5 is lack of resources whilst 3x3 is easy to manage and allocate points. She said it was important to introduce 3x3 when it was still new and they used to be number one in the zone and number eight in Africa. “Some people were worried that the 3x3 will swallow the 5x5. I never had that worry because they are different disciplines but I saw our strength here. When we received the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) award in 2019 for number one in the world in terms of implementation of 3x3, we took it seriously. At the time we set up, there were centres in Francistown, Serowe, Maun, Kang, Pitsane, Lobatse, and Gaborone,” she said. She added that countries such as Botswana should invest in short versions of different sporting codes such as beach volleyball, fast 5 netball, baseball 5, and 3x3 basketball because they are easy to manage.
