Botswana’s poor performance at the just ended 9th edition of the AUSC region 5 Youth Games in Lilongwe, Malawi is causing a stir within the local sports fraternity. The games were held from the 02 – 10 December 2022.
On the seventh day of the games on Thursday, Botswana was languishing on position 8 in the medal table with only nine (9) medals, three (3) gold and six (6) silvers. The medal haul left Botswana with a lot to do to climb up the medal table.
The country’s struggles for medals have not gone unnoticed. For sports administrators and analysts, the poor performance boils down to absence of school sports. For a long time, school sport has been the bedrock of Botswana’s sports development.
Unfortunately, the competition however, came at a time in which the country is struggling with resuming school sport which is normally used to select athletes for the Region 5 games.
Sport administrator, Oreeditse Marakakgoro said grassroots development is the core foundation of talent identification and development. She says if the country wants results, there has to be a concerted investment in development of talent.
“Both lack off grass roots development and School sport are contributing to these Region 5 games poor performance. Codes depend fully on schools and even clubs get their athletes from schools before Codes can identify them,” Marakakgoro says.
“Had sporting codes been actively involved in grassroots sport development, they could have established good relationships with parents. They would have had access to the students without going through schools,” she said.
She is of the belief that funds for development were channelled elsewhere. If funds for development were used strictly for that, she says we would be singing a different song right now.
“It is high time sporting codes go for scouting talent. There is depth of talent in remote places of this country. Sport in Botswana is taken for granted. As a country we should be intentional about policies that will boost our sport and make it an industry,” Marakakgoro opines.
Her views are the same as those of local sport journalist and analyst City Keagakwa. He says the absence of school sport is one of the main undoing of our sport development programs.
“Different sporting associations have ‘Re Ba Bona Ha’ program which mainly rely on the availability of school sport. The results we are seeing at region 5 show the importance of school sport which has not been active since 2019. Along with covid-19, they have seriously affected the development of our young athletes,” he says.
While the absence of school sport is contributing, Keagakwa believes lack of talent management by administrators cannot be overlooked when talking the current poor performance. For the same games in the previous year, team Botswana managed to acquire 64 medals. These medals were obtained by the most of athletes who just took part in the just ended games.
“Last year there was no school sport but we managed to get 64 medals from the same games. What has changed since then? This now points to talent management, how we nurture and monitor progress of talent. Whether we have enough coaches and personnel to actually do that job,” Keagakwa points out.
Despite all the assumptions being thrown around, the biggest question now is where are we getting it wrong?
“Because there is no school sport are we going to just fold our arms and wait for its return? Football and badminton come with the strategy of speaking to schools to train kids bringing their own equipment and coaches. We need strategies in order to avoid sudden death of talent in our country,” he concludes.
