Botswana should expect to remain with a good netballing legacy from hosting the Netball World Youth Cup in 2017. This was said by the International Netball Federation (INF) President, Honourable Molly Rhone during a media brief this past Monday. Fielding questions from the media after a weeklong stay in the country, the INF President said while the event will give the country exposure, the main interest will be for Botswana Netball to have a great netball legacy.
“One of the main things is the legacy that is left from netball. From the two nations that last hosted this tournament, Cook Islands and Scotland, the latter got a new nice facility and so did Cook Island. We would like to see that here as well. We will play indoors and Botswana we will also have sprung a wooden floor, that should enable Botswana to host more international games,” the INF President explained.
She said another great thing is that Botswana will be able to develop and upscale more Match Bench Officials (MBO) in the country. Citing from the Scotland experience of hosting, Rhone said the event helped revive netball in Scotland.
“The Scotland experience has been great. What has happened is that netball has been revived in Scotland. The increase in the numbers playing is really staggering,” the INF President said. Outside netball, Rhone said hosting the event helped to boost the economy of the country, with at least twenty countries expected to participate as well as the INF member countries expected to come into the country for their congress. Rhone said she is hopeful that hosting the event will turn netball into a brand in the country. She also said as part of the INF projects, there will also be a chance for coaches to benefit as there will be netball coaching seminar.
“What we have decided to do is that at every major championship we will have coaching seminars, the same thing will happen here,” Rhone said.
For her part, the Head of the Gaborone Netball World Youth Cup 2017 Local Organising Committee (LOC), Prisca Mokgadi said apart from preparing the Botswana ‘girls’ for the senior team as well as up-scaling MBOs in Botswana, they want to have netball infrastructures as a legacy of the Gaborone Netball World Youth Cup 2017. She said even if they cannot have the infrastructure built by the time of Gaborone 2017, they want to ensure that as a result of this event, Botswana Netball Association (BONA) will have its own indoor facility in future. Commenting on the matter, BONA President Tebogo Lebotse Sebego said they will be looking to brand team Botswana to inspire other young girls to take netball as a sport of choice.
“One of the things that we have to get right as BONA is making sure that our team is properly branded and exposed. If young girls see other young girls doing well they will aspire to be like them,” the BONA President explained. She said the key is to get the country’s netballers to be role models and to get netball to be a household name in the country. Lebotse Sebego said as a result, BONA is happy to host the Netball World Youth Cup as it will force them to focus on the younger players.
