21 Jul 2022

Botswana Netball Association (BONA) has assembled a team of 14 players to represent the country at the Africa Netball World Cup qualifiers.

The qualifiers, billed for University of Pretoria Sports Hall in South Africa August 20-27, will see two winners joining the World Cup in Cape Town.

BONA’s spokesperson, Mokeresete Mokeresete, said in an interview that the selection of the team was conducted from February to June this year.

Mokeresete said Botswana will be competing for the two slots that were remaining in the Africa region.  

While SA and Uganda have already qualified, four countries will represent Africa in the meet while the remaining slots will be for Europe, Asia, Oceania and the American regions each being represented by three countries to make 16.

“We have not yet received the fixtures for the qualifiers, but expecting them anytime from this week. We are yet to know our opponents,” he said.

Mokeresete said the team was under the tutelage of a well experienced bench in the likes of Seipei Gaelesiwe, Neo Ntwaagae and Jenny Van Dyk (head coach).

 The BONA spokesperson said Van Dyk would lead the national team to the qualifiers.

For her part, Van Dyk said the men’s team really helped them a lot as they were able to identify their weaknesses even though they were not that tough as expected.

She said the male team was not playing to its level best as players appeared to be a bit lenient towards their women teammates. 

Van Dyk said the team’s morale was fine except that some players were still finding it difficult to pick form.

She said a lot of countries had started their leagues while Botswana was at a quarter of what other teams had done, but the whole idea was for the team to qualify as a short term plan.

Van Dyk said she had been working with the team, furbished them with the training plan to follow even in her absence. 

She said friendly games had been proposed with some teams in South Africa in the Northwest Province.  ends