Africa-Press – Lesotho. Lesotho Netball ladies team is enduring a losing streak at the ongoing 2018 African Union Sports Council (AUSC) Region 5 in Botswana. The team head coach, Mr Munyaradzi Shanduka said this is a learning curve for his ladies.
He told Informative Sport that it was a good idea to bring the team to the tournament so they gain the much needed experience. According to him, by the time Lesotho hosts the same tournament in 2020, the team will be in a position to make the nation proud.
He said this is the first time the team competes at these kinds of games so he believes they will learn more in return. In their first game Lesotho lost 60-30 to Malawi, before going down 53-35 to Zambia.
Lesotho were again beaten 51-33 the hard to beat Zimbabwe and later outplayed by South Africa with 81-37. Shanduka said his girls are playing their hearts out with the only major difference from other nations being lack of experience.
“My players are still young and they need to mature. So come 2020 they will be fine,” said Shanduka. He added that his players improve with every game and the anxiety he witnessed in the first game has decreased.
Shanduka suggested that the nation keep the players together while ensuring preparedness for 2020 games, indicating most of them will still be eligible to play by then.
On the other hand he said the nation seems to be reluctant to release resources to coaches to go out into the outskirts so as to scout and recruit children with required height.
He said there are many tall people in Maseru but most of them are not interested in netball. “Getting a taller player and getting players who can play netball are two different things.
Therefore it requires more resources to source such players,” he added. “All we need to do is to is make sure that we keep them together and expose them to international competitions between now and 2020,” mentioned Shanduka.
