The Sunday News
THE BULAWAYO Athletics Board has started implementing the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) kids’ development programme at Ingubo Primary School in Old Lobengula.
The initiative comes barely a week after the city successfully hosted the kids’ athletics lecturers’ course at Northlea High School.
BAB chairman Manuel Mpofu said that they had already initiated the programme at Ingubo who are the first recipients. The school was also represented at the Northlea workshop.
“We have already rolled out the programme and we are targeting school children from Grade 1 to 7 and presently Ingubo has already implemented the programme and they are using the equipment we received (during the workshop),” said Mpofu.
Pupils at Ingubo were using the equipment during the physical education lessons and other schools would also get a chance to participate in the programme that was an initiation phase, said Mpofu.
At the Northlea workshop, each of the country’s 10 provinces received athletic imitation equipment which is a resemblance of real athletics implements such as hurdles, pole vaults, cross hop, teen’s javelin and discus, distance markers, speed ladders amongst other things.
“Young children need to be moulded into athletes at a very young age as this helps the growth of the sport and also strengthens us as a nation when competing in international events such as the junior Olympics and Region 5 AUSC games,” said Mpofu.
He said the programme would be rolled out at all schools in the city in an effort to capture and nurture promising athletes.
“The introduction of usage of imitate implements such as discus, pole vault, shot-put and javelin is meant to familiarise with them these activities and also encourage them to specialise in a particular field event they are interested in at a young age,” he said.
Zimbabwe partakes in international competitions such the Olympics, Africa Junior Athletics Championships as well as AUSC games; hence the developmental programme will go a long way in identifying and developing junior athletics talent.
