Botswana Bridge Federation (BBF) is focusing on the future and will be investing time and money in youth development.
The federation plans to ensure a steady growth in the number of youths in all their tournaments to ensure sustainability, relevance and continuity.
BBF will host the Bridge Open pair’s tournament first weekend of November at the University of Botswana where youth have been encouraged to register in large numbers.
BBF Public Relations Officer (BBF PRO) Mbakisi Malilo explained that the objective of the tournament is to attract and develop young players into the game. “We expect the young players groomed to one day represent the country in international tournaments” Malilo explained.
He added “BBF have low number of youngsters’ playing the sport. Since we do not have enough youth in BBF we found it fit to use tournaments like Open pairs to attract more youth so that we can have a base and young pool of players to select our future national teams from” Malilo said.
He observed that other codes have been rigorously focusing on youth development and they have benefited a lot from those development structures. BBF want to put more emphasis on youth development in order to avoid being left behind.
This event is fully funded by BBF as they could not raise a sponsor. It is an open tournament which means there are no age restrictions and categories for the games, all registered players will battle each other simultaneously to win the title. The players will face each other depending on the pairs and how many players have registered.
Malilo explained that they are satisfied with a number of people that have shown interested in the coming tournament and have since confirmed that they will register to participate and compete.
Registration fee is P100 per player and will be done on the day of the event prior to the commencement of the tournament.
Malilo revealed that players who will emerge in the top three will win medals and money .The champion will walk away with gold medal and P1000 prize money. The silver medalist will pocket P800 while the bronze medalist will be consoled with P600.
