Durban — The KwaZulu-Natal Netball Challenge tournament will take place at the Victoria Mxenge Indoor Sport Centre in uMlazi this weekend.
KZN Netball’s president, Gugu Ngema, said the challenge would differ from the Telkom Netball League – the top one in the country – because it would focus more on the provincial level and include six teams.
Ngema was speaking at a briefing held by the KZN Sports Confederation and the KZN Department of Sports, Arts and Culture in Durban on Thursday.
This year’s Netball World Cup will be hosted in Cape Town in July.
Ngema said that this tournament was meant to assist and prepare teams to be ready to play in the national league.
The six sides would come from KZN, the Eastern Cape and the Free State. Each province would field two teams and be separated into two groups of three (A section and B section).
“We need to grow our development and high performance inside the province.
“Hosting such an event is very important because it is a Netball World Cup year. This will only grow the game of netball in the country,” said Ngema.
Ngema invited the Free State and the Eastern Cape sides, as they regularly featured in the Telkom Netball League, and their participation would help to prepare the KZN sides to compete against the top teams in the country. It would also give them the opportunity to sharpen their skills prior to the tournament.
“The most important thing is to learn from these top teams, because they are the best, and it gives us an opportunity to test ourselves and gain ideas whilst not being in a serious competition,” said Ngema.
Sbusiso Dlamini, an executive member of the KZN Sports Confederation and the deputy chairperson of the Transformation and Development Commission, said this challenge was positive and important, because it would increase the legacy of netball beyond the World Cup.
He said that, historically, people would only speak about the open age group of netball, but now emphasis was being placed on the youth.
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