Zimpapers Logo

Dingilizwe Ntuli
SCHOOLS play an important role in shaping the lives of children by giving them access to a variety of experiences such as sport and other physical activities.

Sport actually enriches young people’s lives and should be considered just as essential as the academic aspect.

It gives children the opportunity to live healthy and active lives by improving their physical and mental wellbeing, and helping them to develop important skills like teamwork and leadership.

Sport also helps build character and helps children to develop resilience, determination and self-belief in addition to instilling values and virtues such as friendship and fair play.

Therefore, when sport is not part of the school system, learners are robbed of the opportunity to improve their physical wellbeing, to develop resilience and fair play, among other character-building virtues that sport helps to instill.

Sport has been suspended in Zimbabwean schools since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in the first term of 2020 to date.

There had been hope that schools’ sport will resume this term with ball games, but Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services Minister Monica Mutsvangwa on Tuesday said there is a need to closely monitor the situation in schools for the coming few weeks before allowing the resumption of sporting activities in a post-Cabinet briefing. She said this was due to the re-opening of schools and onset of winter is usually associated with increased cases of Covid-19.

That statement would have dampened the hopes of learners, who haven’t seen action for almost three years.

Three years of no action is a long time and plenty of budding sporting talent has obviously been lost, as the pandemic robbed them of a platform to display and develop it.

For example, a learner that was in Form 1 at the outbreak of Covid-19 in 2020 only got to do athletics in the first term and nothing else since then.

That learner is now in Form 3 and if they were talented in athletics that has all gone to waste because the lockdown, which forced schools to close for two terms in 2020 until last year as well as suspension of sports in schools, put paid to it.

They lose out on understanding and enjoyment of sport as they progress through secondary school and the long-term impact of missing out on sport for almost three years will be felt in the long run.

We had already been performing dismally on the international stage in virtually every sport with no juniors’ development policy and the ongoing freeze on schools’ sport points to a bleak future for local sport because talent that should have been developed since 2020 simply vanished.

Learners never got an opportunity to test their talent against each other via various schools’ competitions that existed before the pandemic.

Last week Milton High School’s first team rugby received a kit donation, but it could well mean the unveiling at the school was the last time they wore it and they may never savour the experience of donning it in a match.

On Tuesday former footballer Cephas Chimedza posted a photo of Churchill High School football team, which represented Zimbabwe in the inaugural Copa Coca-Cola Regional Cup in 2000, on Twitter.

That team featured Norman Maroto, who went on to play for Dynamos in the Premier Soccer League.

Dynamos spotted Maroto as a schoolboy at Churchill where his talent was nurtured and ripened for the big league.

Copa Coca-Cola was the prime secondary schools’ football tournament in the country which provided a springboard for a number of players’ professional careers like Maroto, but unfortunately the continued freeze on schools’ sport has denied potential Marotos to showcase their talent.

Most schools’ sport grounds now either lie derelict or used for boozers’ games on weekends.

Learners have missed out on the excitement of competing with other schools and the emotions that come with it.

Their secondary school stories will have nothing about sport competitions because they had none.

When I was at Milton High, it was compulsory for all Form 1s to attend the first team rugby matches.

We would scream our voices hoarse chanting the school’s war cry and this inspired a number of us to want to become part of the team.

There was obviously a sense of pride when the team won and utter dejection when it lost.

Losing was never taken lightly and among the memories most Milton old boys of my generation still carry is the shame of losing a rugby match to Gifford High.

So embarrassing was the loss then that the first team rugby captain apologised in front of all the boys during assembly.

He bore the shame of becoming the first player to captain a Milton High first team rugby team to lose to Gifford High.

More losses to Gifford followed, but the first one has never been forgotten by most Milton old boys of that generation wherever they are around the world.

The pain of disappointment and excitement of winning is what our learners have been missing since 2020.

We pray there won’t be a surge in Covid-19 cases so that schools’ sport can resume and learners create memories on and off the field.