After hosting a successful beach volleyball series last year in July, Botswana will not be available to host the same tournament this year owing to financial commitments.
The Zone VI Beach Volleyball series was introduced in 2022 by the regional volleyball governing body in order to upgrade the sport in the zone.
With first and second leg of the series having been staged in Namibia and Mozambique this year, the hope was that Botswana would once more host the competitions. The cost of hosting the series are estimated between P150 000 and P200 000.
“This year we have had serious challenges of funding, so we didn’t want to commit to something we will not be able to give our all. We have to refocus our energy on the team which has qualified for the World Beach games and spend the little resources we have to help them do well. Of course we did show interest of hosting in July like we did last year but the region informed us that this is the period in which there is no hosting because its too cold and focus is at Africa and World Beach games. So it was also a blessing in disguise because we would have struggled and faced difficulties to host because to date we are yet to get our subvention, so we decided we won’t be hosting,” Botswana Volleyball Federation(BVF) president Tsoseletso Magang told Voice Sport.
Although Botswana will not be hosting the series, the local duo of Jack Sekao and George Chiswaniso have been doing well in the beach volleyball series having won the first leg in Namibia and finishing fourth in Mozambique.
Currently ranked first in Africa, the duo have qualified for the World Beach games set for Mexico in October and will further compete in the African Beach games in Tunisia from the 23rd -30th of June.
“Of course not hosting this event almost kill and discourage the sport but we are working on other plans at national level for beach volleyball. We can’t just rely on the region alone to promote and grow the sport, so we are working on putting together a national circuit where we can have a lot of national players taking part because the zonal series events are always expensive to participate in, so only a few can compete there,” said Magang.
According to Magang, much focus will be on assisting the beach volleyball duo of Sekao and Chiswaniso.
“The cost for us is that we can’t just take players to major tournaments without them having match fitness. So we have made it possible for them to take part in the series events this season. We had loved to put them in camp for a longer time but due to lack of funds we couldn’t. As of now we are hoping to take them to Europe to prepare and take part in at least one high profile tournament there before the World Beach games. So those are the kind of costs we incur,” shared Magang.
Meanwhile, BVF is scheduled to host Zonal Club Championships in 2024 after ten years. The last time Botswana hosted the regional interclub tournament was in 2013.
