Africa-Press – Lesotho. The Lesotho Badminton Association will host an Air Badminton Day on Saturday at Sefika High School. The event is being fully funded by the Badminton World Federation (BWF) and it was supposed to have been held last year but the association postponed all their events to this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Air Badminton is an ambitious new development project that was introduced by the BWF in 2019 to create opportunities for people of all ages. The project aims to give people the ability to play badminton on hard, grass and sand surfaces in parks, gardens, streets, playgrounds and beaches around the world.
In Lesotho badminton is played mostly at schools and there are school teams that have already represented the country at competitions in South Africa. The Lesotho Badminton Association say they will be identifying talent through Shuttle Time games in order to recruit more players.
Shuttle Time is a schools badminton programme launched in 2012 by the BWF to support the principle that children should lead a healthy and active life, both in and out of school.
The BWF has pledged US$5 000 (roughly M71,200) in support of Lesotho’s Strategic and Operational Plan, which was done last week, as well as its National Tournament Support, Technical Official Development and Air Badminton programmes.
The association’s secretary general, Mohlala Mopeli, said they already have people that have undergone a theoretical umpire’s course but they still need to do practicals.
Mopeli explained the importance of having qualified people officiating at tournaments. “In order to grow in terms of participation you need to have domestic tournaments to have a national team,” Mopeli said.
“At the moment we have one coach who passed level one, another one failed their practical, he has to do a practical in order to get the certificate.
We have four people who did the umpires course, they also have to do the practical and be certified. ” Mopeli continued: “We also have line judges in Badminton and this support will help us to say we have certified referees, line judges.
When we are hosting national tournaments we can say we have qualified people. While other programmes have already started Mopeli said the badminton association is now looking at how they can start their technical official development and national tournaments.
The association say the strategic and operational planning helped them to draw up their 2021 activity plan in terms of talent identification, competitions and realigning their constitution to that of BWF and the Badminton Confederation Africa, amongst others. So far more than 150 teachers from five districts have been trained through the Shuttle Time programme.
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