Darts association moves to clean bad image

Lekopanye Mooketsi | Friday February 21, 2014 14:59

However, the Botswana Darts Association (BODA) is striving to do away with this image and has identified new venues for league games. 

This was the message that emerged during the association’s annual general meeting, which was held at the Botswana College of Agriculture (BCA) auditorium in Sebele at the weekend.  

In his report, the BODA secretary general, Rebaone Kgaswane, said darts have always been associated with alcohol in the past as it was played in bars. 

“Bars have always been areas that accommodated our sport which made a lot of people believe that it is a sport that is played by drunkards.  

“Moving our sport out of bars has been a challenge to us as we were unable to secure proper venues. 

We had thought by now the long proposed indoor sports arena that was supposed to be constructed behind the National Stadium would rescue us,” he told the meeting. 

“I want to take this opportunity to applaud the Southern Regional Darts league committee to have taken a stern position in making sure that no players take alcohol while playing. 

“I hope the north region is doing the same thing. 

Let me inform this gathering that the issue of anti-doping is very serious.

Our players can be randomly picked for testing at anytime and once found with some enhancing substances including alcohol, stern measures will be taken,” Kgaswane warned.

On other issues, Kgaswane said the association was nearly deregistered last for failing to submit annual returns.

“We had to work very fast gathering the required documents so that we could submit before deregistration,” he said. 

Kgaswane said another challenging issues for darts in general is the lack of sponsorship for leagues. 

He recalled that the last time when the darts league was sponsored was in 2000 by Castle Laager.  

BODA president Basil January revealed that the association had embarked on an ambitions mission to introduce the sports to schools.

The chairperson of the Botswana National Sports Council (BNSC), Solly Reikeletseng, who graced the occasion, said there should be no such thing as big sport codes and small ones. As far as he was concerned, the impact of codes was the same.