The ten-year marriage between the Botswana Netball Association and Motor Centre Group looks set to last as the latter is due to be announced as the National Netball team sponsor.
Information reaching Standard Sport is that the company will pop out P100 000 to sponsor both the Motor Centre Netball Series and other National Team activities.
The Motor Centre Netball Series, to be held on the 3rd and 4th of July at the BONA courts, will be used to select senior National Team players. Confirming the new developments to Standard Sports, BONA president, Tebogo Lebotse, says only four teams are due to compete in the series. The four are a select team from the North, a select team from the south, the team that represented Botswana at the 2009 COSSANA games in Durban and a yet to be announced Provincial team from South Africa.
“The sponsorship is new in a way in that previously (the past 9 years) Motor Centre was our national league sponsor. After we secured the Spar sponsorship for the league, we negotiated with Motor Centre to sponsor the National Team,” the BONA president said, when asked about this latest development.
This is the first time for Netball Botswana to hold such a series. Lebotse says apart from the Motor Centre Netball Series, there are other yet to be announced activities that the National team will undertake as part of the sponsorship.
At the end of this series the National Team management led by the Head coach Ms. Seipei Gaelesiwe is expected to announce her squad of 20 players that will start prepariations for the World Qualifyers. About 10 African Nations, including Botswana, South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Zambia, Namibia and Uganda are expected to compete at the World Qualifyers for two spots to join Malawi, which has already qualified by virtue of being ranked 5th in the world.
The qualifiers are to be held in September this year.
