By TARIRO Sajeni, ZIMBA WAVE MEDIA. Harare
The president for Zimbabwe Netball Association Leticia Chipandu
The president for Zimbabwe Netball Association which oversees all the netball leagues in Zimbabwe, Leticia Chipandu is excited about 2024 tournaments and is expecting a huge positive change for the netball leagues in Zimbabwe.
According to the latest world rankings, Zimbabwe has managed to maintain their thirteenth position but looking forward to moving up the ladder.
“Our aim is to improve our standing on the world ranking because we are still number 13 so we want to play more games and improve our world ranking to reach the top 10.
Apart from Africa championships which is our annual event for Africa continent, we also have the Confederation of Southern Africa Netball Associations(COSANA)senior championships in the pipeline where we would also want to go and participate or compete so that we improve our world ranking,” says Chipandu.
She says what the Zim Netball needs is more practice and they have a chance to be better ranked internationally so they need to be part of these tournaments more and they are looking forward to it.
“We have been invited as a country ( senior team) to tournaments like the pacific which is going to take place in July in Australia, there is the Celtic cup that is going to take place in Scotland in November and we are preparing to go and participate in these tournaments because they are all world ranking and when you want to be better ranked in the world, you have to play a lot of games and this is what we aspire to do with our national team,” Chipandu says in an interview with Zimba Wave.
Chipandu says so far these are the tournaments they are looking forward to but they might receive other invitations as time go on.
Zimbabwe Netball National Team Captain Felistas Kwanga
Zim netball has come a long way and its leagues are doing their part to take netball to the next level; last year it was the Platinum Queens(Zvishavane) from the Premier Netball League(PNL) ,that took the trophy home.
PNL is the first ever professional league in Zimbabwe which seeks to promote the girl child through sport and its main sponsor in Nedbank Zimbabwe.
Last year they were very happy to be part of the success of the league as they took their excitement to their Facebook page to congratulate the Platinum Queens on their victory.
In the post, Nedbank said, “Our sponsorship went a long way to support the less privileged girls and women, helping them stay away from idleness and risk of drugs and affording them an opportunity to play Netball professionally and make a living from it.
Congratulations to Platinum Queens for their outstanding victory in the 2023 Premier Netball League. We would also like to extend our heartfelt congratulations to all the other players and teams who received well-deserved awards at the ceremony…”
It is reasonable to say that Platinum Queens will be looking forward to maintaining their dominance in 2024 and win again this season which should begin early or mid-March according to Chipandu.
PNL has got 20 teams and Platinum Queens have managed to emerge champions, scooping the title for the third time in a row since the league’s inauguration in 2021.
Chipandu says Nedbank has been sponsoring the Gems and they have partnered with Spar for two years but they really need more corporate sponsorship so that they can see their activities taking place on different levels.
“Of course government has been our major sponsor but the government has lots of other national associations that are feeding from the same basket hence it can only do this much so as netball associations we need to do our own fundraising so that we compliment their efforts,” she says.
ZINA has been doing everything in its power to see Netball taking off and getting better ranked which explains the workshops that they have held to train netball technical.
Chipandu told Zimba Wave that on Saturday 27 January, there was a workshop at the Harare Girls High with the provincial technical heads, tutors and assessors of umpires the reason being that there were revisions on the netball rules that were made on the world cup in Cape Town so they are raising tutors that will in turn go back to their provinces and train the coaches so that they use the latest model of the rules of the game.
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