Moorosi Tsiane
THE Lesotho Sports and Recreation Commission (LSRC) development officer Malitsietsi Zwakala has expressed gratitude the stakeholders who participated in the nominations for this year’s edition of the Lesotho Annual Sports Awards (LASA) for its continued support.
The third edition of the awards, which were established in 2016 as the Sports Legacy Awards to honour outstanding sports personalities in the country, is scheduled for 6 April 2019 at a yet to be confirmed venue.
The awards have since been transformed into a bigger occasion and now have different categories like administrators, coaches, athletes and journalists.
The nominations were opened on 1 February 2019 until last Friday.
Zwakala said they received promising support with nominations for the Junior female and male Sports Person of the Year, Sportsman and Sports Woman of the Year, Sportsman and Sports Woman of the year With Disability, Newcomer of the Year, Administrator of the Year, Volunteer of the Year, National Federation of the Year, Sports School of the Year, Sports Team of the Year, Coach of the Year, Umpire of the Year, Sports Star of the Year, Legacy Awards and the Journalist of the Year categories.
“I think people are now used to this initiative and this year the response has been very promising and we can only hope to get better in coming years,” said Zwakala.
The nominations were done by media personnel, national federations, the Lesotho National Olympic Committee (LNOC), the LSRC and various clubs.
Zwakala said they are now verifying the nominations and will next week start the evaluation while the list of finalists will be announced on 5 March.
“This week the acting chief executive officer is verifying all the nominations to ensure that every nominee is nominated in the correct category, then we will hand over to the evaluation panel next week and the list of the finalists will be announced on the 5th of March.”
She said unlike in the past, this year they just wrote a circular once and all stakeholders started making their nominations online.
“I think online system was efficient because after we released the circular, the nominations were submitted unlike in the past where we ended up extending the periods or nag the associations to vote. After the nomination deadline, you would sometimes find that you would have one nominee after the deadline,” Zwakala said.