The Botswana Volleyball Federation (BVF) has taken a bold step and restructured the annual Capital Motors BMW volleyball tournament. This was revealed to the media by the BVF President Daniel Molaodi when launching the restructured tournament this past Thursday. Addressing the media, Molaodi said the restructuring was an attempt by the federation to give clubs competing in the tournament more value for money.
Under the new format, the Top 8 teams, as at the end of this season’s Mascom Volleyball League first round, will compete in the quarterfinals on October 3, with the winners proceeding to the semifinals the next day, where they will be joined by the ladies, who start their tournament at the semifinals stage. Molaodi said the idea behind restructuring the tournament came during the BVF and Capital BMW sponsorship talks in the last year as the two parties tried to figure out how to give teams more value for money. Following on that, the BVF has now decided to reduce the number of teams competing in the tournament so as to increase prize monies for the tournament.
The new format is a departure from the format used in the past editions, where all teams were placed in different groups with the winners and runner ups in groups then qualifying for the quarterfinals. With the tournament serving as qualifiers for the Zone 6 club championships, Molaodi said expectations are that the improved prize monies will help winners meet some of their financial obligations to compete at the zonal competitions. He said this comes in handy as the Botswana National Sports Commission (BNSC) has long stopped helping clubs financially when competing in continental or regional tournaments. As a direct result of the restructuring, for the first time since the tournament started, winners will be guaranteed prize monies well over P20 000. The winners of the men’s category will walk with a P35 000 cash prize, while second, third and fourth placed teams will pocket P20 000, P15 000 and P10 000 respectively.
The prizes will be slightly different in the ladies category where winners will be guaranteed a P25 000 cash prize, with the second, third and fourth placed teams expected to walk away P14 000, P10 500 and P8 500 richer in that successive order. Explaining the difference in prize monies for the ladies and men categories, Molaodi said organisers decided on the prizes based on the number of games due to be played. With the men starting in the quarterfinals and the ladies in the semifinals, the BVF then deemed it fit to vary the prize monies. Meanwhile, Molaodi said this year’s edition of the Capital BMW Volleyball tournament quarterfinals and semifinals will be played at the Serowe Institute of Health Sciences (HIS) indoor sports facility on the 3rd and 4th October. The quarterfinals, which will feature only the men’s teams, will see top seeded Police VI play 8th seeded Kalavango in the first match, while second seeded Kutlwano will face off against 7th seeded Itekeng in the second match.
The third game will see 3rd seeded BDF VI clash with Mag Stimela while 4th seeded Spiking Stars will battle Diphatsa. The winner of the first match will then face off against the winner of the fourth match the following day in the semifinals with the winner of the second and third match facing off in the other semifinal game. In the ladies’ semifinals, which will be played on the 4 October, top seeds Kutlwano will battle 4th seeds BDF VI while the second semifinal will pit 2nd seeds Mafolofolo against 3rd seeded Kalavango.
