Belly Critic

The establish-ment of the Mpumalanga Integrated School Sports League has long been overdue. School sport was dead and buried in the province. Hats off to MEC for education, Reginah Mhaule for launching this league.
Mhaule appears to have stopped the lip service, common to many of our leaders, as she has really made an effort to revive school sport in the province. I have mentioned this before to my buddies and I am going to repeat it again.
We need to have days dedicated to sports in all our schools in the province, especially in our sprawling townships and villages. It is in such leagues where we will be able to produce our very own Mpumalanga stars who can represent us playing for Bafana Bafana, Netball Proteas and the Springboks.
Since these leagues have been aligned with education programmes, these athletes’ data can be easily traceable.
The children will have to understand that for them to play at professional level, they will have to go to school first. It is a known fact that not all pupils participating in the various sporting codes can become professional athletes and earn a living from it.
The emphasis on getting a qualification must be ensured so that those who can’t become professional athletes one day, will have something to fall back on. Even those who will become professionals, their professional life will be short and then they will need to retire.
Now that the school sports have been revived, hopefully, these leagues will be competitive like it used to be in the past when Wednesdays were sports days at school. Since the leagues have been launched, we need to identify our best-qualified and passionate people who will run them. There is a need to send these coaches and administrators to the best youth coaching schools to equip them with the latest techniques of producing highly technical players.
Let us not consider sentiments and employ people simply because they have played the game and therefore feel they qualify to teach our youth. People must be employed on the basis of the passion, knowledge and qualifications that they possess. Coaches and teachers must be encouraged to attend coaching introductory courses before they can be employed.