Africa-Press – Tanzania. TWENTY-eight participants are taking part in the Hockey Olympic Solidarity coaching course, which started in Tanga on September 15th this year.
A ten-day course scheduled to wind up on September 24th has brought together participants of both genders from Tanga, Arusha, Dar es Salaam, Zanzibar, Lindi and Mwanza regions.
This course is being conducted by instructor Maggid Abu Talib who is an FIH Coach Educator from Egypt.
Tanzania Hockey Association (THA) secretary Kaushik Doshi said that they had been given a hockey coaching course level 1 by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) through Tanzania Olympic Committee (TOC).
The course was officially opened by the chief guest, Regional Commissioner of Tanga, Adam Malima.
In his speech, Malima asked the course participants to start dreaming big things from now onwards to implement their dreams.
The regional commissioner also asked THA to organize a regional hockey tournament of both genders to be held next year in Tanga and that he will sponsor the event, a gesture applauded by participants.
He asked the association to spread the game though said that it is also a challenging task in the absence of sports equipment.
During the opening ceremony, TOC General Secretary, Filbert Bayi also said that hockey was the only team sport that ever represented the country in the Moscow Olympics in 1980.
He said that TOC had continued to assist THA that included in 2017 through Olympic Solidarity Development programme whereby they spent nearly 55m for various development hockey activities and projects that 1664 students of both genders took part in.
Bayi added the course was supposed to be held in 2020, but was postponed to this year due to the global Covid- 19 crisis.
Also thanked RC Malima for gracing the occasion whilst vice Chairman of TOC Henry Tandau stressed that if duties/taxes are to be removed on sports equipment, then its achievable to spread the game country-wide.
The course instructor Talib also thanked TOC and IHF for being in Tanzania and he asked all the participants to start planning from now so that they can fulfil their dreams of going to the Olympics Games one day.
He further said that to achieve anything, requires strategic planning and hard work to yield results.
