PHS to withdraw from Limpopo Athletics events after chaos

POLOKWANE – Hoërskool Pietersburg (PHS), which produces some of the country’s top athletes, will in future be forced to align itself with Limpopo Athletics (LIMA), a private athletics body, to ensure that its athletes get to the top in their fields.

This followed after Limpopo Schools Athletics (LIMSA) once again failed athletes of the Capricorn cluster when the cluster athletics meet that took place on Wednesday proved to be chaotic and was suspended for over two hours before getting started again.

Activities were suspended as track officials and South African Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu) members demanded to speak with the LIMSA committee regarding the R20 fee that all participants were charged.

According to Hoërskool Pietersburg (PHS) principal Willie Schoeman, this chaos had been the usual state of affairs for a few years in a row.

He said three meetings had been held last year between participating schools and representatives from LIMSA, and a request by participating schools to LIMSA was made for LIMSA to do its planning early to prevent previous years’ problems.

“The LIMSA structure expects schools to host the events but supply no funding for it. Because nothing is planned, it is expected that schools with good sports facilities should assist. A proposal was made that R20 per athlete should be charged to help cover costs, and also that each school should make a contribution, but one school that hosted such an event is still struggling to get its money, ” Schoeman said.

“LIMSA also just moves the dates as it suits them, irrespective of whether schools had planned other official events already.”

Schoeman said PHS had decided not to participate in any LIMSA activities in future. “It is not acceptable that our athletes be exposed to such chaos,” he said.

He further said the school would align itself with LIMA where the athletes could still qualify for the South African Athletics Championship by means of a club structure.

Louis Schutte, a sports coach from a Polokwane school, told Review he had tried to assist LIMSA to save Wednesday’s athletics meet. He said he had spoken to Peter Mathekga, who was the chairperson of the committee for sports, last Friday about the payment of the liability fees for the Peter Mokaba Stadium, only to find out later the fees had still not been paid. Schutte said it was then decided to charge each participant a fee of R20.

He said during a sports meeting last Saturday, he was asked by some LIMSA committee members if he could do anything to save the cluster athletics meet, for which no arrangements had been made yet. It was imperative that the cluster athletics meet took place before the district athletics meet on Saturday, where the SA team would be selected. “For the last 20 years things have not gone well at LIMSA,” he said.

Mathekga said the matter was “all politics”. He said the department of sport, arts and culture’s budget was too small to cover all of LIMSA’s sports meets.

“Everybody worked together to pull off the day and make it a success,” he concluded.