Beach volleyball for all

MUKWIMA CHILALA writes

@SunZambian

THERE is need to spread beach volleyball to other parts of Zambia so that the sport can be quickly promoted, says Olympic Youth Development Centre (OYDC) coordinator Isaac Tembo.

Tembo said that despite being landlocked, there still were enough structures and beaches in Zambia where the sport could be played.

He told the Sun Sport in an interview that the sport had the potential to grow because of the many structures suitable for playing it.

He said that the three locations had already been identified in Samfya, Kariba as well as Mongu which were endowed with abundant sands.

“Even if we are surrounded by other countries, we have places where we can play beach volleyball, we have rivers, lakes so for now we already have three places where we shall be playing from,

“We have Samfya, Kariba and now we are going to also spread it to other parts of the country starting with Mongu because the place already has a lot of sands,” he said

The volleyball coordinator who is part of national team selectors said that they had also spread the sport in schools because that was where most of the young athletes were found.

He said that the sport had been receiving a lot of attention and interest from a lot of young athletes and had continued to grow from the time it was introduced in 2013.

Tembo said that the OYDC volleyball had now started contributing a number of its players to the nation team.

The centre has been running a beach volleyball league which runs from April to October under the auspices of the Teulings tournament.

The league has attracted 6 teams from different communities from which coaches attending the games were  scouting for players in preparation for an upcoming international game against Cape Verde.