Not many young children in the rural schools grow up with dreams like pursuing tennis as a sport, unless they move to an urban setting.
BY MUNYARADZI MADZOKERE
This is why Molife, a Domboshava-based rural primary school deserves to be praised for breaking new ground by constructing its own two low-cost tennis clay courts in a bid to groom future national champions from the community.
Already, three tennis players from the school namely Tadiwanashe Chingadze, Vanessa Kwaramba and Esnath Bvenende have done extremely well at national events.
Zimbabwe Davis Cup player Courtney Lock in July this year and highly-respected local coach Richmore Murape, visited the school which had been using the football pitch and classroom walls to train tennis players.
One of the tennis courts is now almost complete.
In an interview with The Sports Hub, Molife headmaster Ignatius Ganyo spoke about the motivation behind the construction of the tennis courts.
“This idea was birthed from the fact that our children were using a football pitch to train with no proper equipment. They would hit the ball against the wall to prepare for competitions and we thought, ‘why not construct our own facilities?’” Ganyo said.
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“What inspired us the most was the fact that our kids went to provincial tournaments and excelled. It was only logical for us to make sure we built better facilities to get the best out of the talent we have,” he added.
The establishment of the courts is being spearheaded by the parents and the community in conjunction with the school development committee.
“This project is parent-driven and together with this community, they have done much of the work up to this stage. It’s work in progress — a low-cost project and we want to believe we are going to see results out of this.
“We are going to open the facilities to the community because there has been immense interest in this sport, which was once regarded as a preserve for the elite. We want to leave no stone unturned in a bid to create tomorrow’s tennis champions from Domboshava,” said Ganyo.
The latest development is likely going to make Molife a high performance centre for Mashonaland East and make life easy for Murape, who has embarked on a drive to spread the game to rural areas.
Other schools such as Sally Mugabe, Mutake, Rusununguko High School, Monte Casino and Goromonzi have benefitted from Murape’s initiative.
