Africa-Press – Botswana. After missing some major tournaments, the Botswana Netball Association (BONA) has finally found its feet as it held women and men’s national team trials on Saturday.
The trials were used to identify both women and men players who will represent the country in upcoming competitions such as the Africa Netball Championship which will be held in Malawi at the end of the year. The women’s team will also compete in the four nations competition that would be held in Singapore in November and the World Cup qualifiers scheduled for Kenya next year.
BONA sports development Officer Oganeditse Moduane, who is the head of selections said in an interview that 43 men and 30 women had turned up for the trials. He said the trials would trim the numbers to 20 players for both the men and the women teams, following which the players would head to the final selection camp where each team would be further cut down by five players. Regarding the criteria used to call the players for the trials, he said an advert was sent out calling members of BONA-affiliated teams to apply to undergo the trials.
“The first thing we did before the trials was to engage them in a physical training exercise, through which we tested them for fitness, and all those who failed the fitness test, we kept them aside,” he said.
Moduane said the national teams would be announced after the final selection camp, once the technical team was satisfied with the players’ performance. He said despite there being some tried-and-tested players, they had resolved to open up the opportunity for any interested netball player for purposes of promoting and upholding fairness and transparency in the sport instead of hand-picking well-known players.
“We didn’t want to restrict it and risk ending up with players who feel that they have permanent places in the national team. We want competition,” said Moduane
Some household names in netball, among them Boikanyo Selogetso, Maungo Simone, Barati Phesudi and Cheludo David are among those who used the opportunity to seek placement in the national team.
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