Malawi Handball Women’s Team brings Silver and Bronze Medals from Zone 6 in SA

By Hosea Banda……..

Malawi Handball women Teams U17 and U19 has ended on position 2 and 3 in this year’s Handball zone 6 Tournament which was played in South Africa.

Malawi Handball Association General Secretary Denis Fumbani Kumwenda says the association is happy with the way the girls has performed.

“As an association,we are happy with the way our girls have performed, because we were not expecting that they can end up on position 2 and 3 at the tournament considering the teams we met at the tournament have enormous experience.” Kumwenda said.

Kumwenda continued to say that the team would have done better but the main barrier which has also resulted into poor performance was to do with travel documents.

The budget for handball also was also to blame for the dismal show. As handball association the plan was to be in camp for two weeks and the whole amount for the cause was 12 million kwacha but they only received half of their budget from government and sports council.

“Another issue which costed us not to perform well was about the financial support, because as Malawi Handball we budgeted about 12 Million kwacha but we only received half of our budget which was 6.5 million kwacha from Sports Council and government. Furthermore we only had a week to prepare for this tournament instead of usual planned two weeks,” Kumwenda said.

Handball Association of Malawi has pleaded with government and stakeholders to start supporting handball sports in the country as it has no sponsors to have a national league. The association says as one way of strengthening the sport, the association has introduced handball sport in schools across the nation.

Sports analyst Parry Chinyama says he is proud with the way Malawi national women handball U17 and U19 teams has performed.

“This is at least a good position to finish in a tournament. Malawi has been a perennial loser in most sports disciplines ending in these positions surely we can applaud our sportsmen in handball,” Chinyama said.

When asked if they can honor an invitation from state House.

Chinyama says it is good that the team should be invited to State House to be honoured as they have done by putting Malawi on map. But he was also of the view that it is not all the time that people should expect that when they perform good should be invited to State House.

“Yes it is good to invite our sportsmen to state house but not always. Particularly when they haven’t clinched the gold medal. But these positions don’t warranty state hosting”, Chinyama said.

Malawi Handball women U17 ended on position 2 and was given a silver medal while Malawi National women U19 handball team ended on position 3 and walked away with a bronze medal.