For a nation that has been starved of victory for a long time in almost every sporting discipline, the opening of a High Performance Centre (HPC) in Blantyre should have certainly been greeted with relief.<\/p>\n
Sports associations were expected to frequent such an institution for their athletes to access top training facilities and sound coaching.<\/p>\n
HPCs offer training, guidance and assessment, including offering nutrition to athletes over a long period.<\/p>\n
But the Malawi scenario is different. It is the College of Medicine Sports Complex\u2019s HPC that is asking associations to come forward with their athletes.<\/p>\n
About five years ago, Malawi became the first country in Africa, outside South Africa, to set up the centre in Blantyre. Now there are other HPCs in Ethiopia, Tanzania and Botswana.<\/p>\n
Manager at the Blantyre facility, Augustine Banda, says the centre has been grossly under-utilised by the country\u2019s sports associations.<\/p>\n
He described it as a fully-fledged internationally-accredited facility that is inspected annually.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are very excited to host such a wonderful resource which is the bedrock of enhancing athletes\u2019 performance in any set-up. The place is the standard for assessing the performance of teams and individual athletes,\u201d Banda explained.<\/p>\n
The manager noted that despite holding symposiums to open up the centre for use by the relevant stakeholders, athletes, teams and associations are still non-responsive.<\/p>\n
He said it was important for sports associations to appreciate the role that such a centre plays in enhancing the performance of athletes.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe offer the platform for our country to assess whether we are indeed getting value for the money we invest in the game. The problem is that people want to get things for free,\u201d he observed.<\/p>\n
Banda commended Malawi National Council of Sports (MNCS) for the Podium Performance Programme (PPP), which has been training athletes at the Sports Complex since July last year.<\/p>\n
The athletes, in four sporting disciplines of tennis, judo, boxing and shot put, are being prepared for this year\u2019s African Union Region Five Games in Angola.<\/p>\n
The fruits of the PPP were evident last week when 26 out of the 36 athletes training at the centre won medals during provincial championship held in Harare, Zimbabwe. The trip to Zimbabwe was meant to prepare the athletes for the Angola games.<\/p>\n
Banda said the centre had at one time engaged Tigresses netball club, and enabled the team to improve performance.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are now training three teams in rugby, hockey and athletics. We are doing this on our own besides the program we are running with Sports Council. But associations should do more to make use of the centre,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
MNCS sports development manager, Ruth Mzengo, said the PPP agreement was made to prepare athletes for the Angola games, but may extend further depending on the results.<\/p>\n
She pointed out that much as the programme was running very well, there was need to develop the centre further to match required standards.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe still need to do more to improve the place. There is need for fixing the track and bringing in more machines in areas like the gym. The indoor facilities also need to be worked on. But we are happy with how we are working with the centre,\u201d said Mzengo.<\/p>\n
She declined to state whether the facility was benefitting the country or not, saying it would be too early to comment as the project was on pilot stage.<\/p>\n
Athletics Association of Malawi president, Godfrey Phiri, said it was good that athletics is one of the disciplines that are on the programme at the centre.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a good initiative because it is accommodating a long-term plan. We may not have used it as an association, but we all need to support it. We had no institution to accommodate the youth with long-term plans, so the coming of the centre is good for us,\u201d he remarked.<\/p>\n
Malawi Olympic Committee president, Oscar Kanjala, said he could not comment on behalf of his body since they had not yet started utilising the centre\u2019s services.<\/p>\n
Netball Association of Malawi general secretary, Carol Bapu, was also reluctant to comment and only said the centre was a great idea though her association was yet to make use of it.<\/p>\n
In the recent past, Malawi netball Queens used to train at the centre.<\/p>\n
Volleyball Association of Malawi general secretary, Jairos Nkhoma, said his association had not yet made any use of the centre, but emphasised that it was up to teams or clubs to use the centre for raising the standards of their respective games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For a nation that has been starved of victory for a long time in almost every sporting discipline, the opening of a High Performance Centre (HPC) in Blantyre should have certainly been greeted with relief. Sports associations were expected to frequent such an institution for their athletes to access top training facilities and sound coaching. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":20559,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20555"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20560,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20555\/revisions\/20560"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}