19 Jun 2024

Botswana beach volleyball men’s team made up of George Chiswaniso and Jack Sekao are in Tetouan, Morocco for the 2024 Continental Beach Volleyball Cup-Paris Olympic Games Qualifiers set for June 18-23. 

They will be up against great teams like the host Morocco, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Benin, Ghana, Nigeria, Togo, Egypt, Kenya, Rwanda, Mozambique, South Africa, Comoros, and Mauritius. 

Botswana will be one of the countries that other nations will be marking, after winning a bronze medal at the African Games held in Ghana. 

Other countries now know that Chiswaniso and Sekao are a force to be reckoned with. 

However, the question is, did they prepare adequately for the tournament, to make it to the 2024 Olympics? 

Some of the teams they were competing against in Ghana, started preparations in earnest immediately after the Ghana sojourn. While Botswana was training at Marabou Rocks in Gaborone, South Africa has been training at Czech Republic, Mozambique went to Brazil and Portugal. 

Gambia was in Qatar while Morocco was in Poland.  The Botswana Volleyball Federation (BVF) president, Tsolseletso Magang, admitted that the team did not prepare very well owing to non-availability of countries that could host them. 

“Also the people we had hoped that we will go to i Europe we faced with the challenges of acquiring visas,” she said. 

Furthermore, she said Slovenia had given them a good deal but it was not easy to get visas, adding that they then tried Morocco but the time they wanted to go there it was EID, and a lot of people were on holiday, so they felt it would be a waste of resources. 

Magang said they then had to go to Gambia, but it was already late and they decided that instead of the players taking that long journey to Gambia for two days and back to Morocco they should just train at Marabou Rocks.

 “It was our wish to expose them to an international training camp, but we tried our best back home as we were working with the Botswana National Olympic Committee, and we organised a 10 days camp for them and they were able to train properly,” she said. 

Magang, however, said despite the team not going for an international camp, they were confident that the players would leave an indelible mark in Morocco. 

“These players are just amazing in the court, they become warriors.  I am confident that as much as we had wished for them to have had good competition practice, they will definitely compete,” she said. Ends