Volleyball Tournament Starts Thursday

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Volleyball Tournament Starts Thursday
Volleyball Tournament Starts Thursday

Africa-Press – Botswana. The excitement has intensified amongst volleyball lovers as the build up towards the start of 2024 CAVB Zone VI Senior Club Volleyball Championship has reached fever pitch.

A total of 50 teams from Southern African countries including Botswana, the hosts, will converge on Ditshupo Hall in Gaborone to contest in the 10 days long tournament from December 5-15.

The other countries include Lesotho, Eswatini, Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Angola, Mozambique, Namibia and Malawi.

A quad of playgrounds has been set up under one roof and Botswana Volleyball Federation (BVF) vice-president administration, Ndibo Lebala, said there would be a technical meeting tomorrow and a preliminary enquiry.

He explained that during the preliminary enquiry, the teams would be examined to confirm if the players qualify to play in the tournament looking at their registration statuses and medical certificates as required by the system of the Federation of International Volleyball.

A draw will then be conducted upon which, fixtures would be released indicating the games, which would start on Friday.

Lebala said BVF’s dream was to host 64 teams but that could not come to pass as only 50 teams have registered; 22 female teams and 28 male teams.

According to Lebala, it was later revealed that the teams faced hardships at the banks when they tried to make payments for registering for the games.

“Some teams failed to show up because of banking conditions, which could not allow them to process payments because they were not aligned with the banks’ policies. Some managed to pay and yet the payments still pended. It seemed like many banks have changed some of their regulations,” said Lebala.

However, Lebala said if upon arrival, the team convinces that it has made payments, the team could still be accepted to play in the tournament provided they could provide anything that serves as proof.

He said under the ladies’ category, Botswana would be represented by Spiking Stars, Police, Kutlwano, Mafolofolo and BDF VI.

In the men’s category, Spiking Stars, Police, Kutlwano, Yaros, Mag Stimela, BDF VI, Kalavango and Prison VI would hoist the blue, black and white flag of Botswana.

Lebala said this year’s games would be full of attention-grabbing stories as it is a fusion of the volleyball ‘big guns’ up against the emerging teams.

“Increasing the number of teams was a strategy of giving more players, especially the locals, exposure so that they can grow and develop the skills of the game and be prepared to withstand the magnitude of the style of play in the future competitions,” said Lebala.

In terms of sponsors, Lebala said Fairground Holdings is one of the sponsors in terms of venue.

He highlighted that the company has released their premises at a more charitable price in order to enable the BVF to achieve the scale that is needed to host such games.

The other sponsor is the Okavango Diamond Company (ODC), who has disbursed P250 000 towards hosting the tournament.

He said they are still expecting other sponsors because some are still showing interests

Lebala said BVF wanted to use this opportunity as hosts to get more sponsors so that as they package games, it could be able to offer Batswana an experience to remember, an experience-built volleyball just like the 2014 Gaborone Youth Games Poland Qualifiers.

He said to win the people’s hearts to watch the games, they had to be strategic in terms of luring them to fill the hall free of charge so that the spectators would attend in large numbers and learn about the game of volleyball.

To that extent, Lebala said after building up fans’ expectations and trust on the quality of play, then it would be right to convince them to pay for watching the games.

“Currently, we believe that if the sponsorship could meet our needs, we cannot double tax Batswana with gate fees and buying from the stalls. We would rather allow them free entrance so that they use their money to support the stalls. We will also plan for non-food stalls so that people could come and pay for the spaces,” said Lebala.

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