- Inactivity continues to cripple the national teams – Molaodi
- As the ladies nation team partakes at African Champs
TLOTLO KEBINAKGABO
The Botswana Volleyball Federation (BVF) is still finding it hard to succeed in securing sponsorships for both the league and tournaments, BVF president Daniel Molaodi, has told this publication.
The BVF national league is currently not running after their union with Mascom elapsed late last year as the mobile network company decided against renewing it. The Molaodi led federation is also facing the same predicament in cup competitions as there is no sponsor who has come forth to sponsor their tournaments, JB Sports has been one of their sponsors in tournaments in the recent years. “We are yet to find anything concrete; we are still running around in search for potential sponsors but we have had no luck so far,” Molaodi told Gazette Sport in an interview. “We will however not give up and we promise to keep on searching.”
In the past, BVF has been using the April to November period to stage their league but with that interval close to elapsing, the BVF president told this publication that they have since gave up on staging the league this year. “Time is no longer on our side and if we find a sponsor for the league I can assure you that it will be for next year. For now we are just running helter skelter in search for sponsorships of the tournaments, it is already late for the league to be staged,” Molaodi noted.
Molaodi who has been the president of BVF for more than a decade went on tell this publication that the absence of the league and tournaments is continuing to disturb the national teams’ progression.
“That is because we use those competitions to select players as they use that platform to showcase their capabilities and if there are no competitions we are likely to come up with less competitive teams,” he said. “The competitions also work for us in such a way that they help in preparing our players but now they report to the training camps rusty because they do not train regularly as they can when the competitions are there. That is really going to affect the national teams’ performances this year that is filled with many activities like the All Africa Games and Olympics qualifier games.”
Meanwhile the women’s national team is currently competing at the Volley Africa Nations Championships which begun yesterday (Tuesday) in Egypt on which Molaodi said they did not set any target for the team.
“We told them to just go and do their best, we want them to use that competition to get ready for the African Games,” he stated.
“It is not like we are saying the Championships are not important but due to lack of robust preparations prior to them it was difficult for us to set a target for them.” He said the players will also use the Championships to get to know and understand their opponents better ahead of the African Games as they do not have the budget to organise international friendly games and long term training camps for their national teams.