By REGINALD KANYANE
Netball South Africa and Twizza have launched a new Netball Club Champions across the country. The Netball South Africa president, Cecilia Molokwane said this initiative will take netball back to the people. Molokwane said their quest to grow the game seems to be finally coming to fruition.
“It is always a pleasure to work with partners that understand the vision that we have as Netball South Africa and see the value in investing towards the growth of the sport. We are grateful to Twizza for throwing their weight behind this club netball tournament.
“This will help us to begin the journey of giving more players access to the sport. We believe that this is the start of greater things to come. I would like to urge all players to get involved in this tournament and challenge districts in making sure that we make this possible,” she said.
Molokwane further said the Twizza Netball Club Championships will be played over a four-month period between May and September 2021, and will be broken down into districts, provincial and national levels.
She added that the formation of the tournament will bridge the gap in the netball pyramid and help them to unearth talent at a local level.
“This tournament will provide players, coaches, umpires and administrators with the opportunity to showcase their abilities at a competitive level, and to contend for selection for the SPAR National Championships, followed by The Telkom Netball League, and eventually the SPAR Proteas.
“Event organisers are hoping to see about 52 districts hosting their own leagues with about 20 clubs per district participating. The top two teams from every district will compete at an inter-provincial netball competition which will run between July and August,” said Molokwane.
She said the winners of each provincial tournament will then compete in a national competition to determine the best club in South Africa and these finals will take place between the 23 and 26 September 2021.
Molokwane said growing the sport and making it professional is not an overnight job, neither is it a task that they can do alone.
“The federation has a 2025 vision themed ‘Magnificent 3M’ which seeks to have at least three million netball people registered, irrespective of whether they are coaches, players, umpires, or administrators, she said.
Meanwhile, the Twizza’s Group Marketing Manager, Lance Coertzen said: “Sport is one of the world’s greatest unifying forces and one that as a country we can all get behind. As a proudly South African company, we are honoured to sponsor the rising young stars of the netball courts.
“We’ll also, be seeing many memories and Twizza moments being made in every match. The competition seeks to attain a few objectives which are to ensure that we develop grassroots netball at a club level.”
Coertzen said this will assist the league to unearth netball talent across the country and most importantly, provide consistent competition for all players across South Africa.
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