daniel chigunwe
Takudzwa Chitsiga
Zimpapers Sports Hub
THE National Athletics Association of Zimbabwe have started the preparations for the 2025 season in earnest after lining up capacity-building courses in some of the country’s major cities to help boost performance on the field.
The athletics body will hold courses for Coach Education and Certification Systems (CECS) and Technical Officials Education System (TOECS) in Harare, Bulawayo, Mutare, and Masvingo.
Harare will host the first of the programmes with the CECS, scheduled for tomorrow until Saturday.
It will then move to Bulawayo on February 7-8 while Mutare hosts the courses from February 31 to March 1.
Harare and Bulawayo will host the TOECS on February 7 and 8 as a way of decentralising the programme. Each province with at least 30 technical officials or coaches can register for officials’ or coaches’ courses, and they will host a class in their respective province.
Tendayi Tagara, the NAAZ president, said they are happy that they will have some qualified officials and coaches in all provinces and districts through to zones.
“We are happy to announce that each province now has qualified officials and coaches, but we still need more, up to the district and zones, so that our athletes are handled in a professional manner.
“Through these programmes it will benefit the athletes as well as keep up with the World Athletic Global Plan objectives.
“We have more than 10 000 registered schools in Zimbabwe, and our vision is to have at least a single qualified coach at each school,” said Tagara.
NAAZ are happy that through these programmes they are reaping rewards as they had easy qualifications of the juniors to global competitions in the past 10 years.
“We are grateful that through the initiatives we have a testimony of the impact of our programs in the last 10 years, and we want to keep that momentum.
“There are some athletes like Tapiwanashe Makarawu, who is a product of this plan. Presently we have more than 10 under-22 athletes competing in US after going through our programmes and we are proud of that,” said Tagara.
Zimbabwe, through NAAZ, was one of the two countries out of 214 countries that provided two athletes in the finals of the 200m at the Olympic Games last year in Paris, the other being the US.
“We want to repeat or better the feat in the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. We were very proud as a sports code to achieve such. “This year we are developing coaches and officials targeting qualifying for the Southern Region Games in Namibia in July, where we are sending an Under-19 team, Africa Juniors in Algeria, World Relays in China this May, and the World Champs set for August in Tokyo, Japan.
“We are also preparing a youth Olympics team for 2026 in Senegal. We will also be hosting Southern Africa Senior Champs in July,” added the NAAZ president.
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