Segolame Boy: A Huge Testimony For Constituency Tournaments

Monitor Editor | Monday January 23, 2017 11:26

What is humbling about the Township Rollers and Zebras star is the fact that he is a direct by-product of the constituency tournament, where he was spotted while representing one of the Selebe-Phikwe sides by representatives of a Serowe club that later sold him to Rollers.

Just recently, athletics body announced their desire to have athletics included in these mass grassroots games, to enable their talent scouts and coaches to tap talent and polish it. Athletics, it should be noted, is probably the easiest sport in the world that enables anyone from even the humblest of backgrounds to break into the professional ranks and wave bye-bye to poverty. We have living examples to prove that fact with the likes of Botswana’s own California Molefe, Kabelo Kgosiemang, Gabriel Garenamotse, Glody Dube, Amantle Montsho, Nijel Amos, and lately Karabo Sibanda and his brigade.

The beauty of it is that these athletes do not have to wait for local competitions or awards to earn a living, but they follow the international calendar and earn their unbelievable US dollars. It has been found that unlike other sports that require a lot of investments in infrastructure, and coaching, with athletics, talented individuals can do with minimal resources and still be able to compete with the best in the world.

In this light, athletics should be seen as a highly practical tool and path toward youth prosperity and empowerment, for both boys and girls, that is without prejudicing the chances of the other gender.

It is in this light that the athletics body recently lobbied government and the concerned national sports authorities for inclusion in the constituency tournaments. While there is no doubt that the constituency tournaments have continued to benefit premier sporting codes such as football, as in the case of Boy and Township Rollers and the Zebras, a deliberate strategy to upgrade our talented young athletes from poverty to international stardom can be forged through this initiative, without necessarily losing focus on the original spirit of this initiative.