By Munyaradzi Madzokere
After witnessing the ever bulging number of young people being lost to drug and substance abuse, an aged Glen View couple Raymond Maravi (69) and wife Elizabeth Maravi (66) decided to set up football academy, which seems to be thriving since its establishment in 2016.
Glen View Community Football Academy has at least 98 registered budding footballers, including a girls’ team, coming from as far as Glen Norah, Southlea Park and Ushewokunze. In its third year of existence, the academy already boasts of silverware after the Under-14 boys’ team won the Kadewere Cup in 2017.
The Kadewere tournament was held in memory of the late Warriors forward Tino Kadewere’s father Onias, a well-known grassroots football coach.
And also two of their players Lennon Chibi and Tafara Mungofa have made the Under-17 national team.
Standardsport caught up with the couple to find out what motivated them to start the academy considering that none of them has a football background.
“We have twin orphans who live next door and they lost both parents. The other one then went into drugs and we saw how drugs almost destroyed his life and how many of youths suffer from drug abuse. We decided that the best way to assist was to create something for them to do,” Raymond Marawi said.
“That’s how we thought of a football academy. Apart from my passion for football, the main thing was to take these children away from drug abuse. All of a sudden we were overwhelmed by the number of kids coming and now we have three coaches taking care of the project,” he added.
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A well-known junior coach, Jonathan Chimhoga, heads the project being ably assisted by Spencer Nyanhete and Paul Chigurei.
To date, Raymond (formerly with Air Zimbabwe) and Elizabeth have been bankrolling the project from their own pockets, but its rapid growth is beginning to strain their finances.
“At the moment the academy is self-funded. The parents of the children are not yet ready to invest money, but we cannot discriminate. That’s why we need sponsorship.
“We tried to introduce a joining fee, but it hit a brick wall. We have received help from our children in the UK with jerseys, but we need money to get the players here. We need transport to travel for games in the High Glen League where we play.
“We also need equipment, food for our young players as well as payment for the coaches. We will accept any form of assistance,” Raymond Marawi said.
The academy is in the process of registering with Zifa.
Glen View Community Football Academy caters for age group teams from Under-12s, Under-14s, Under-16s, Under-18s to Under23s.
According to coach Chimhoga, the Under-23 team has outgrown the High Glen League.
“Funds permitting we would want to play in the Area Zone or Division 3. In earnest, the Under-23 team can compete in Division 2 and hold their own. But it means we would need to travel a lot more and longer distances, which is expensive,” he said.
