The Sunday News
Veronica Gwaze , Sports Reporter
IT took up to the last minute of a nailbiting 60 minutes against perrenial rivals Zambia for the Zimbabwe national Under-21 netball team to give up the “precious” 2025 Netball World Youth Cup (NWYC) ticket.
The Young Gems gave it all up through a heartbreaking 43-41 defeat at the qualifiers tournament which ended yesterday in Pretoria, South Africa.
Zambia went on to grab one of the three available NWYC slots after the other two were automatically taken by hosts South Africa and Malawi who made it to the gold/silver match.
In yesterday’s encounter, the neighbours gave Zimbabwe a good run for their money in what was tightly contested match from the onset with Zambia leading 9-8 at the first quarter break.
Returning from the breather, the Young Gems maintained momentum in what became a nail-biting quarter as the teams took turns to lead and punish each other for the slightest mistakes.
Zimbabwe’s defense was on high alert ensuring that they restrict the opponents’ from getting the passes to their accurate and agile shooters.
Taking to half time, the scoreline read 18-19 with the Young Gems leading.
It looked like Chirenda put a strong word across to his team who returned from halftime breather with renewed energy and confidence to win turnovers widening the lead to 30-33 by end of the third quarter.
However, the rivals would not go down without a fight, they proved strong firing a series of warning shots to the Zimbabweans as they levelled the scoreline before creating a two goals margin which they mantained to the end.
Despite the defeat, head coach Tapiwa Chirenda applauded his team for showing character up until the end.
The mentor said his team for played tactful game, taking instruction although it proved to be a bad day in office for them.
“It was a high pressure game but my girls did not let all that get to them, they showed resilience and mental endurance although we could not hold it to the very end,” he said.
“Our play is not far from theirs (Zambia) so we needed to find an extra urge that we would capitalise on to make it past them.
“We had to play mind games, sell them a dummy and mislead them at some stage of the game and then quickly revert to our usual game.”
Chirenda notes that they knew it was going to be tough, hence needed to be creative with the game.
“We played Zambia in the first round so we knew what they are capable of doing, likewise they knew us so the plan was simply to confuse them and put them into disarray.
“You do not use the same strategy on the same enemy, so to give our girls the confidence to deviate from our usual play a bit, we had to talk about it, it worked well although they could not keep up in some instances and we were punished for that.”
Marketing expert Simbiso Katsekera paid tribute to the Young Gems for raising the national flag high although things did not go as they would have wanted.
Katsekera said despite failing to qualify for the Netball World Youth Cup, the Young Gems’ performance is indication that Zimbabwe Netball Association has a functional junior policy.
“Something needs to be done in terms of marketing, the brand should always be visible and keep the corporate world alert. This will make it easy for them to secure partners and sponsorship.
“In turn, the team will never have challenges in preparations for such tournaments. Poor preparation has always affected this sportcode, this is what also happened with the seniors at the World Cup and I feel the challenge is all in the marketing department.
“They wait until the last minute to start running around to raise finances, which is wrong. This is a 24/7 job or rather there is need for ZINA to set up a functional Marketing department,” he said.
Nedbank sponsors the team.
Katsekera said there is need for other corporates to complement the bank’s efforts.
