I had to feel the fear and go through it. When I started to glide through the water, it was a surreal experience. There was nothing to hear except the water sliding past my head, down my neck, over my shoulders, down my waist, and over my legs. But my heart was pounding; what if I drown? Well, that was my brief encounter with swimming and my experience has nothing to do with the subject of this article. While swimming is regarded as a special code, it remains underfunded in Botswana. Under the Botswana National Sport Associations Resource Allocation Scheme (BONSARAS) for the financial year 2024-2025, the Botswana Swimming Sport Association (BSSA) was placed in tier two.
Under the leadership of Kgaotsang Matthews, the association has been fortunate to secure sponsorship from the Diamond Trading Company Botswana (DTCB), on two occasions. The first injection from DTCB to BSSA was P100, 000 when the junior team travelled to compete at the World Junior Aquatics Championships in Israel last year. Just last week, DTCB tipped the scale and sponsored swimming with a massive P3 million for the next three years. As BSSA celebrates 20 years, probably they will pop the champagne in October as the association was registered with the Registrar of Societies in the same month in 2004. Over the years, the BSSA has had many achievements but one of the beautiful memories was when Naomi Ruele became the second woman and the first swimmer ever to represent Botswana in the Olympics. Ruele received a wild card to represent the country at the Rio 2016 Olympics together with David van der Colf.
