Botswana Volleyball Federation (BVF) will have a busy year in 2023, given the goals that the code wants to achieve, BVF president Tsoseletso Magang has told The Business Weekly Sports.
First on the agenda is securing sponsors for the league and tournaments. “We are already engaging with companies that can hopefully sponsor our activities,” Magang said. “What happens in volleyball is that every two years is a cycle for national teams, and this is one such year. As such, we will be having a lot of national team activities and hopefully tournaments and the league. This will help coaches select teams, prepare players and enhance our national teams. “
Elaborating on sponsorships, Magang noted that they have already made presentations to different companies. “There is a still big cry about how the pandemic has affected companies,” she said. “Nevertheless, we hope to salvage something. Our teams are struggling financially and need money to run their clubs.” The BVF national league has not taken place for more than 37 months, the last league game having been played in the last quarter of 2018 under a Mascom Wireless sponsorship that was not renewed. The Federation faces the same predicament for tournaments.
Magang, who is a former athlete herself, emphasised that they also need to focus on their strategic engagements. “We need to do our strategic plan as soon as possible,” she said. “Our last strategic plan expired in 2017 and even then it did not achieve its purpose. “So we have a big task ahead of us to formulate a new strategy. This strategy will have to reflect what happened in volleyball between 2017 and 2022. We also have to look at our constitution and formulate our standing committees so we can work with direction.”
Meanwhile, reflecting on her tenure alongside her committee in the BVF office, Magang stated that they have tried their best thus far. “This is given the circumstances that volleyball was not played regularly even despite the COVID circumstances,” she said. “Our performance at the region is testimony that our players went for a long time without playing competitive games, but we are hopeful that things will get better as time goes on.”
