The Botswana girls’ team finished in position five while the boys’ team settled for position seven. The event started on October 6 at the National Tennis Center in Gaborone. It brought together the best 12 years and under players across Africa, with nine boys’ teams and nine girls’ teams participating. Speaking to SportMonitor, the BTA president, Oaitse Thipe, said it is important for them to host high calibre tournaments for Under-12 all the way to the professionals. He said this year, they had identified that they needed to give their teams a lot of competition, including the Under-12, even if they do not qualify for the Africa Junior Championships, the BTA hosts to give them a chance to play against the best players in the region.
“Even if we do not get results, this is a long process, we are investing in the future. We developed interest to host this tournament because we realised that we have lots of young players who have an opportunity to replace the likes of Denzel Seetso and Ntungamili Raguin. During the tournament, what we observed is that we need to do a lot in terms of developing our coaches. We need to invest in local tournaments because for these players to play at this level, they need to play a lot of quality tournaments across the country,” he said. Thipe said it also calls for clubs to be supported in hosting junior tournaments, so that when the players start playing in the African Junior Championships (AJC), they have the necessary exposure. He said countries such as Tunisia and South Africa hold training camps for their players hence the high level they are in at the moment. Meanwhile, Thipe announced that by end of October, they will be hosting the World J100 tournament, which is expected to attract players from Europe, America and Asia. “We are expecting our top players based outside the country to be playing here. Players accumulate 100 points in that tournament, which means they can qualify or get closer to qualifying for Junior Australian Open. At the end of the year, we will have another Under-14 Continental event. The players playing here will be playing in that tournament as well,” Thipe said.
He said the tournaments are not only benefiting the BTA and the players only, the economy of the city has benefited from accommodation and transport, amongst other things. “It has been a successful year for us. We have never had a year where we hosted 10 tournaments; it is only in 2024. By December we would have hosted 10 events. It also means our officials are also benefiting, they are getting paid for this assignments. The business community should jump on board and support us, so that we can hire more coaches across the country. Mass participation is important, you never know, maybe our next Wimbledon player is somewhere out there in Shakawe. We need to unlock talent,” he said. Final rankings: Girls: 1) South Africa; 2) Tunisia; 3) Benin; 4) Cameroon; 5) Botswana; 6) Madagascar; 7) Kenya; 8) Guinea and 9) Uganda. Boys: 1) Ghana; 2) South Africa; 3) Tunisia; 4) Cameroon; 5) Zimbabwe; 6) Guinea; 7) Botswana; 8) Kenya and 9) Uganda.
