F/town harvests 53 swimming medals
Koketso Kgoboge | Wednesday December 9, 2015 14:36
The team, comprising eight swimmers, finished first with 23 gold, 20 silver and 10 bronze medals.
Team Gaborone came second with 21 medals, of which six were gold, six silver and nine bronze. Selebi-Phikwe finished third with six bronze medals, followed by Kweneng Region with four silver medals and one bronze. Sowa took position five with two bronze medals while North East was sixth with a single bronze medal.
Amantle Mogara of Gaborone and Lombe Mwape of Francistown put up a brilliant show in the girls Under-18 as they battled out for honours.
However, Mwape emerged on top with six gold and six silver medals while her spirited opponent Mogara got five gold and four silver medals. In the boys Under 18 category, Francistown’s Michael Botha and Matthew Ives were no competition as the duo dominated the pool in every contest. Botha was triumphant over three days, scooping nine gold and two silver medals while his teammate Ives won seven gold and five silver medals. Botha, who has represented Botswana in international competitions, expressed excitement at his achievement. “I wasn’t expecting a lot and I would say I have done quite well. It’s all a result of hard work in the pool. I was expecting a lot of competition because I know these guys. I have trained with some of them and they are good competitors. Otherwise it was great to see all the districts come together. It was a good atmosphere,” Botha said.
Francistown swimming coach, Knowledge Kabelo, who couldn’t hide his excitement said his team surpassed their target. “You know, we had initially planned for 30 medals; 15 gold, 10 silver and five bronze, but these guys just went overboard. We beat our target by 23 medals. This is quite astonishing. It shows that we had very good preparations. We have been training hard every weekend since our selection back in October and it paid for us.
“This is the best team in the Francistown camp and we knew we should work hard for others, if we are to be crowned overall best and we did our part. The rest is to other sporting codes. We hope they will come to the party and we can win this,” Kabelo said.