LUCSA heads to Botswana
Moorosi Tsiane
LESOTHO Universities and College Sports Association (LUCSA) begins its 2018 campaign of the Confederation of University and Colleges Sports Association (CUCSA) tomorrow in Gaborone, Botswana.
LUCSA president Kokolia Ramabele says team Lesotho is ready to hoist the national flag high.
Lesotho has sent a delegation of 52 athletes and 10 support staff for the biennial games where they will compete against nine other countries. They will compete in chess, football, athletics and volleyball in both male and female categories.
In the last edition of the games that were held in Zimbabwe’s Bulawayo, only Lesotho’s male volleyball team managed bronze medals.
“We went all out to make sure that the team prepares well and the aim is to surpass our previous performance where we only managed to bring home bronze medals in volleyball,” Ramabele said.
“The team is ready to hoist the national flag high in this games. It is also important that we do well in this 19th edition of the games because we are the next hosts in 2020.
“The selection of the team was done during the LUCSA games early this year especially in team sports such as volleyball and football.”
He said they also picked outstanding players from different institutions to form one team while athletes were selected based on individual performances.
“We are impressed with the commitment that all these athletes have shown during the preparation period and we are hopeful that they will continue working hard to improve the country’s performance.”
He said due to some financial constraints they had to leave out some of the sporting codes from the travelling team.
“We know that some athletes in some sporting codes are not happy that they were left out but we faced financial challenges and had to leave out some sporting codes.”
Ramabele said they are banking on their experienced campaigners such as sprinter Khereng Khereng who represented the country at the World University Games in Taipei, Taiwan last August.
“These games are important but we were just unfortunate that we failed to take Olympian Tšepang Sello with us. She has in competitions in Europe but we will also be banking on Khereng as he is one of the few experienced campaigners in this team.
“These school competitions are developmental and they give athletes exposure. The national federations then have to decide what they do with athletes once they have graduated from college.
“It is important to note that the games are a national level competition and not just universities,” Ramabele said.
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