Botswana Karate Association (BoKA) is targeting to have 20 World Karate Federation (WKF) accredited coaches by 2024.
To achieve the ambitious target, the association intends to take advantage of World Karate Federation (WKF)’s online courses to upskill some of its coaches.
Due to the high costs associated with sending coaches outside the country for training, Botswana currently has only one WKF accredited coach, being China Metswi.
BoKA has already identified and enrolled five members in the WKF online coaching course starting on 27th August.
The five are Keorapetse Mogopodi, Keone Kgorotlhe, Christopher Ponatshego, Thato Malunga and Goitseone Mongologa.
Ponatshego and Kgorotlhe are High Performance Coaches and are national team coaches, while Mogopodi is the technical Commission Chairperson responsible for the development of coaches and national team.
Former national team athlete Mongologa is the development Commission Chairperson responsible for General Development Programmes, including elite and zebra programmes, as well as Botswana National Olympic Committee programmes.
This was revealed by BoKA mouthpiece, Isaiah Ramontshonyana in an interview with The Telegraph Sport.
The BOKA PRO pointed out that WKF administrates courses then BoKA access their pools and select how many people the association can enrol.
“The costs of sending members to different countries for coaching courses are very high. Therefore, I think the WKF online coaching courses are a great idea. The plan now is to enroll at least 5 people when a course is available to be able to attain our target of 20 accredited coaches by 2024,” he explained.
He observed that the online course will help if Botswana will host the commonwealth games because BoKA would be able to have coaches. WKF events cannot be officiated without a coaching license.
Ramontshonyana added that the steps to choosing the candidates includes; finding how many people can BoKA ‘s budget cover and which people can be given priority and benefit the association. He added that if BoKA selects a development coach they will be responsible for local development of athletes.
“The course will run for six months, after completing the course we will have a full qualified coach who would had covered all aspects. The previous coaching courses covered mostly laws of the game not much on what a coach has to do in order to come up with a world class athlete. The upcoming course will cover more on athlete coach with six modules including; the Coach, the Athlete, athlete welfare, kata competitions, Kumite competitions and officiation,” he observed.
