In 2015, former Botswana Football Association (BFA) 1st Vice President, Pelotshweu Marshlow Motlogelwa introduced an initiative of Mmathethe Sport Festival with an aim to promote sport development.
The annual event, which is hosted every year in Mathethe village during President’s holidays, is once more set to take place this year from July 17th until July 18, 2022.
According to Motlogelwa, who is the brainchild of the event, their main interest is to identify, develop and nurture talent in the Southern district to promote sport development.
The festivities which began in 2015 with only two sporting codes, football and netball, has grown in leaps and bounds over the years.
The 21 kilometers marathon, cycling 21 Kilometers, six races horse racing, tug of war and snooker are some of the sporting codes that will be on show from across 19 villages in the southern region this year to mark a significant growth of the games since inception.
“During this kind of holidays, you’ll find that activities are so fragmented in villages. So as a way of bringing people together but more importantly bring villages together, we came up with a concept of ‘United Teams’, to pull the village crowd and create competition amongst villages. We started with four villages and over the years, we’ve been growing and now we have 19 villages. This makes for an exciting and enthralling event,” Motlogelwa explained.
He further added that the games give younsters in villages an opportunity to showcase their talents and could join more formal structures to advance their development. “In the process, we bring scouts to spot and possibly sign players to join their teams. We have talents in villages but sometimes it is not easy for these young talents to be seen and progress their abilities. We have taken a deliberate decision to promote young talents, mostly under 23s who still have a lot of mileage in them to partake in our games. Each team should at least have six under 23 players as a minimum and four players should always be on the field with two players on the bench,” Motlogelwa revealed.
He said that his vision is that sport can be industrialized and turned into sport tourism, from which the region’s small and medium enterprises can benefit from during the event.
Motlogelwa added that they are engaging with the corporate world for support and noted that they already have at least half a million (P500 000.00) for this year’s event, which require P71, 300.00 overall to deliver successful 2022 competitions.
“Next year we want to bring in beach volleyball, to make this event a sport tourism holiday where people can come through and have fun. We have been reaching out to sponsors every year, we started with sponsors supporting a code. We don’t reach out to individual sponsors but corporates, and we have had positive response. Our prizes have been growing every year, first prize for football is over P8 000.00. The village leadership has also been very supportive and this has really helped our event to grow,” former BFA 1st Vice President stated.
Motlogelwa added that they work closely with various local sporting codes leadership to help promote talent identification and proper organization of the event to meet required standards of competition in each code.
He further shared that they have also partnered with Mmathethe Community Trust who owns a facility where the games will be hosted; the development of the structure is reported to cost over P300 000.00, and the developments are underway and most of them close to completion.
The annual event, which is hosted every year in Mathethe village during President’s holidays, is once more set to take place this year from July 17th until July 18, 2022.
According to Motlogelwa, who is the brainchild of the event, their main interest is to identify, develop and nurture talent in the Southern district to promote sport development.
The festivities which began in 2015 with only two sporting codes, football and netball, has grown in leaps and bounds over the years.
The 21 kilometers marathon, cycling 21 Kilometers, six races horse racing, tug of war and snooker are some of the sporting codes that will be on show from across 19 villages in the southern region this year to mark a significant growth of the games since inception.
“During this kind of holidays, you’ll find that activities are so fragmented in villages. So as a way of bringing people together but more importantly bring villages together, we came up with a concept of ‘United Teams’, to pull the village crowd and create competition amongst villages. We started with four villages and over the years, we’ve been growing and now we have 19 villages. This makes for an exciting and enthralling event,” Motlogelwa explained.
He further added that the games give younsters in villages an opportunity to showcase their talents and could join more formal structures to advance their development. “In the process, we bring scouts to spot and possibly sign players to join their teams. We have talents in villages but sometimes it is not easy for these young talents to be seen and progress their abilities. We have taken a deliberate decision to promote young talents, mostly under 23s who still have a lot of mileage in them to partake in our games. Each team should at least have six under 23 players as a minimum and four players should always be on the field with two players on the bench,” Motlogelwa revealed.
He said that his vision is that sport can be industrialized and turned into sport tourism, from which the region’s small and medium enterprises can benefit from during the event.
Motlogelwa added that they are engaging with the corporate world for support and noted that they already have at least half a million (P500 000.00) for this year’s event, which require P71, 300.00 overall to deliver successful 2022 competitions.
“Next year we want to bring in beach volleyball, to make this event a sport tourism holiday where people can come through and have fun. We have been reaching out to sponsors every year, we started with sponsors supporting a code. We don’t reach out to individual sponsors but corporates, and we have had positive response. Our prizes have been growing every year, first prize for football is over P8 000.00. The village leadership has also been very supportive and this has really helped our event to grow,” former BFA 1st Vice President stated.
Motlogelwa added that they work closely with various local sporting codes leadership to help promote talent identification and proper organization of the event to meet required standards of competition in each code.
He further shared that they have also partnered with Mmathethe Community Trust who owns a facility where the games will be hosted; the development of the structure is reported to cost over P300 000.00, and the developments are underway and most of them close to completion.
