The Sunday News
THE ZIMBABWE Baseball Association will stage a mini-baseball open tournament in Bulawayo that will be open to all schools as they bid to revamp the sport in the country.
This will be the first event to be hosted by the association following its failure to send a team to the South Africa baseball championships which ended in Gauteng yesterday.
ZBA development coach Washington Nyika said the tournament will be held on 18 to 19 June at Founders High school alongside a provincial tournament that was also set for the same venue.
“The only challenge we have is monetary related hence we are unable to fulfill fixtures which are not in the associations calendar this year, but we are however hopeful that we will manage to rise above the minority sport notion,” he said.
Nyika said that the mini competition will be a preparatory tournament for the inter-provincials which will be held on 9-10 July and players will be selected to take part in the nationals to be held in Harare on a date to be later advised.
“The boys are expected to go a long way and serve the country for the next few years as baseball slowly gathers momentum and we are quite hopeful that we will manage to secure sponsorship from the corporate world,” Nyika added.
ZBA vice president Innocent Mwoyosvi said that Hamilton High School was last year selected to be a centre for baseball; however, minimal work had been done to achieve that.
“Basically there has been slow progress on the initiative owing to financial constraints faced by the association as well as baseball being associated with being a minority sport hence there is minimal support,” said Mwoyosvi.
Baseball has been dormant since the economic difficulties of 2008. However, there was light at the end of the tunnel when the Sport and Recreation Commission put in place a new board in November last year with the sole mandate of resuscitating the sport.
The development followed the disbandment of the former interim executive that was fired over allegations of misappropriation of funds and equipment.
