Mukwima Chilala writes
From the technical aspect we are ready for the region 5 tournament to be hosted in Namibia as everything is in place, says Zambia Martial Arts coach Modlee Chola.
Chola told the Sun sport in an interview from the National sports Development Centre, NASDEC where the team has been training, that the team was ready for the categories that it was going to take part in at the Namibia hosted event.
He paid tribute to all the teams that had contributed athletes to the National team in which the defence sides contributed the highest number.
“Ideally from the technical point of view, we are very ready for the championship, these guys have been in camp for about a month now and as we speak we are actually in residential camp,’’ he said.
“So all is well and we are very much intact as we look forward to a very successful tournament,” he said.
The martial arts coach said that he had picked 35 athletes for the tournament which comprised 7 females with the rest being male.
He further said that Zambia’s success at the tournament would determine the Country’s fate in terms of qualifying to the Continental competition slated for Botswana later this year.
And Zambia Martial Arts federation president Kennedy Mukuka said that his administration had put everything in place to prepare for the tournament and that it was not going to leave any stone unturned.
“’We have put things in place, where we are going to get the majority of the people we have on the ground because it’s not just the players that we are looking at but we are also looking at the officials, that is the coaches and referees,’’ he said.
“When we go outside the Country for a tournament, our coaches and referees undergo some form of training in that country so that they qualify to be coaches and referees in different tournaments to come because these tournaments are graded.
“If our coaches and referees are not trained at this tournament, then it means that they cannot official at a bigger tournament which at continental level,’’ he said.
