The Sunday News
Ricky Zililo in Binga
THE Zimbabwe Volleyball Association (ZVA) was forced to postpone the Binga Beach Volleyball tournament to a later date due to low registration of teams.
The Binga Beach Volleyball tournament was set to be the country’s first beach volleyball competition of the year and had been scheduled to start on Friday with a technical meeting, with the finals played today.
Mxolisi Ndlovu, the ZVA president said low registration by teams as well as requests by clubs in camp preparing for the regional Club Championships set for Lusaka, Zambia from December 9 to 21 led to postponement of the second edition of the Binga Beach Volleyball.
Mxolisi Ndlovu
Ndlovu apologised on behalf of ZVA for the late announcement of the tournament cancellation which was done on Thursday, with the competition’s local organising committee (LOC) getting news of the postponement the next day.
“The Binga Beach Marathon will certainly be played and registration despite having few teams having registered will continue until we have the number of our targeted participants. We are looking at having the competition early next year in either January or February. Circumstances leading to postponement of the Binga Beach Volleyball competition were that some clubs are already in camp preparing for the regional Club Championships in Zambia to be played from December 9-21. We also have some of the participants who are representing the country at the African Union Sports Council (AUSC) Under-20 Games in Malawi who asked if they can be accommodated because the Binga Beach Volleyball is the only one in the country played on natural sand. There are also six teams that represented the country at the regional beach volleyball series a fortnight ago in Lesotho who stated that they need time to beef up their purses so that they can compete in Binga. So, after going through all these, we saw it proper to postpone the event so that we have everyone coming up early next year,” said Ndlovu.
A visit by the Sunday Sports crew to the Binga Sand beach along the Zambezi River on Saturday, saw a number of local fans and some from Hwange milling at the airstrip pondering their next move having planned to spend the weekend entertained by volleyball players.
“We drove from Hwange with my four friends hoping to catch some volleyball action only to find out now that the tournament has been postponed. We’ve wasted our money but we’re going down just to enjoy the beach view than return to Hwange without playing on the river bank,” said Joseph Sibanda.
Recent Ncube, a member of the competition’s local organising committee said: “We only got communication on Friday that the tournament has been called off. We didn’t have enough time to alert people about the changes but we remain hopeful that ZVA will announce new dates soon.”
Zambezi Amazon pair of Vuyiswa Kim Dhlomo and Danai Guyo are the women’s defending champions of the Binga Beach Volleyball as they beat Tracy Njanji and Lillian Chirandu of AM Academy 2-0 in the 2021 final.
Handsome Moyo and Proud Nyoni of Luveve High School Volleyball Academy (Luvac) won the men’s title after getting the better of AM Academy 2-1 in the final. – Follow on Twitter @ZililoR
