Netball included in Special Olympics

Netball teams from seven provinces competed against one another from Thursday 17 November until Saturday 19 November at the Peter Mokaba-stadium.

Mabel Mogale, an educator from Laerskool Nylstroom, was selected as the head of technical officials, in charge of all the netball empires and scorekeepers during the championship.

The Post spoke to Mogale following her participation in the very first netball championship in the National Summer Games. Mogale, who was born and bred in Polokwane, moved to Modimolle in 2014 with her three children, where she teaches Sepedi at Laerskool Nylstroom.

She is passionate about netball and has played since primary school. As a registered member of Netball South Africa (NSA), she volunteered at the Waterberg District’s Netball Association for a number of years and more recently at the Waterberg Sports Confederation.

Under the skilled guidance of Magriet Bester, she completed the technical officials training program in 2019. Earlier this year when netball was included in the Special Olympics, Bester invited her to be part of the team of netball officials. Bester is the administrative official for NSA and the provincial umpire’s convener for Gauteng. She is also involved with the training of technical officials for tournaments and championships.

Three days of fierce competition saw the advancement of the Eastern Cape’s netball team as the national winners after beating the Western Cape team with one goal. Gauteng obtained third place after beating the team from KwaZulu-Natal and Limpopo achieved fifth place ahead of Northern Cape and North West.

The next Netball World Cup Championship will be hosted in Cape Town from 28 July — 6 August 2023. Even though the Special Olympics netball team won’t be competing, they will be cheering for our local team who achieved fourth place in the 2019 World Cup (Liverpool England).