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From Robert Mutsauki in ABUJA, Nigeria
MANY talented and promising Zimbabwean athletes have over the years secured sports scholarships, mainly at colleges and universities in the United States of America. The sports which have yielded the greatest number of scholarships are athletics, swimming and tennis, but I am of course, more familiar with the athletics scenario.

These scholarships (given in full or in part depending on athlete credentials) have been an opportunity for the beneficiaries to combine education with sport. Most of these athletes would ordinarily not be in a position to fund their own higher education abroad so the benefit and the added factor of enrolling at the university with five “Ordinary Level” passes (after passing special aptitude tests) as opposed to “A Levels” (a local requirement) have been great enticements, particularly given the challenges of accessing university education locally, which include limited opportunities and high costs for the average student.

The requirements attached to the awarding and retention of sports scholarships were initially more focused on sport performance and potential but over the years, the responsible authorities (NCAA) have tightened the academic requirements emphasising and also insisting on the need by each student to maintain specified satisfactory academic performance in addition to the performance on the sports field; in other words, to have an acceptable level of performance in both education and sport.

This has without doubt heaped pressure on the scholarship holders who always have “an axe hanging over their heads” in the sense that poor performance in any of the two performance areas for whatever reason could ultimately mean losing the scholarship support.

A scholarship could also be withdrawn for other reasons such as violation of the eligibility rules which include the strict prohibition of receiving money for sport performance or sponsorship like a professional athlete.

A high level of discipline and diligence is clearly called for in these circumstances and the conditions attached to the sports scholarship can only be taken lightly at one’s own peril. Loss of the scholarship could literally plunge one into darkness and point to an insecure and uncertain future in a foreign land with the real possibility of enduring the humiliation of returning home empty-handed if an alternative option did not materialise.

Sports scholarships were taken up from the 80’s but the uptake intensified in the 90’s as the awareness spread and the outstanding sports performances by some of these early beneficiaries such as middle distance stars Phillimon Hanneck and Savieri Ngidhi and also sprint king Fabian Muyaba helped to popularise the scholarship platform.

What is interesting is that individual athletes rather than National Sports Associations were seeking and accessing scholarship opportunities directly with minimal support from the responsible organisations. I recall that Gaily Dube, who was my protégé in the late 80s’, was offered a sports scholarship on the basis of her outstanding performances on the track but because she did not have a sponsor for the airfare and other requirements she sadly “abandoned” the scholarship offer; a most regrettable scenario indeed but this is just one of the many missed opportunities by talented Zimbabwean athletes.

Of course it has to be said that we also had several outstanding athletes who were offered scholarship opportunities purely on the basis of their sport performances but could not take them up because they fell short on the NCAA’s academic requirements.

We can only speculate now as to what might have been if Dube and others at the time had managed to take up the scholarship offers. Even today, I believe that the responsible organisations have largely not taken up the initiative hence the emergence of organisations like World Wide Scholarships which seem to have done a needs analysis and identified an existing gap in the national sports system which they then decided to exploit and came up with a business concept which seems to be yielding positive results even though some may choose to view it from a different angle.

The head of WWS Munya Maraire himself happens to be a beneficiary of the US sports scholarship programme.
As far as I know, from a sports performance point of view, the most successful beneficiary of the sports scholarship programme is swimming icon Kirsty Coventry, closely followed by long jumper Ngonidzashe Makusha whose best years I believe are still ahead of him. There have been dozens of athletes who passed through this programme and achieved world class performances but still failed to win World Championship and Olympic medals.

I am proud of a number of them who passed through my hands as coach before taking up scholarships such as Muyaba, hurdler Kenneth Harnden, sprinters Tawanda Chiwira and Laura Gerber.

Harnden is now a top sprints and hurdles coach at Florida State University. Another forgotten middle distance star Letiwe Mharakurwa is now also a coach in the US Collegiate system.

It seems to me that while from a purely sports perspective, the scholarship programme has yielded results which are below expectations (for a variety of reasons), the bigger picture is that the programme has managed to improve the lives of the beneficiaries most of whom managed to acquire quality education, skills and embarked on successful professional or business careers.

On the social front some are now happily married and others have adopted the United States as their second home (although we expect them to return home in due course).

So in this respect, the programme has largely been a success vindicating the dictums that “it pays to play sport” and our own “chitsva chirimurutsoka”.

However, the disappointment has been on the failure to continuously churn out world beaters as originally envisaged and this is the area that requires careful and detailed study. What has become of “gems” who took up scholarships like distance runners Muzanenhamo Gwanzura and Muchapiwa Mazano; sprinters Norma-Jean Harry, Priscilla Chapu and Angela Makaha; hurdlers Yvonne Ntini and Fidelis Mutyambizi; jumpers Christopher Kwaramba and Dafros Mudyirwa to mention a few?

My preliminary observations on the failure by talented athletes to reach their full potential (and in some cases failing to register any significant improvement in sport performance) in spite of being scholarship beneficiaries, are that many of these athletes faced a plethora of challenges which included difficulties in adapting to the new and sometimes strange environment and culture; numerous distractions; inability to focus, lack of self-discipline, motivation and ability to apply oneself, lack of support and encouragement from relevant institutions leading to a feeling of abandonment; intense pressure to perform and deliver; inability to cope with new intense training regimes exposing physical frailties and sometimes resulting in recurring injuries ; underdeveloped life skills such as inability to handle success or failure.

l Robert Mutsauki is the former president of the then Amateur Athletics Association of Zimbabwe (now National Athletics Association of Zimbabwe) who later became the chief executive of the Zimbabwe Olympic Committee. He is now the Technical Director of the Association of National Olympic Committees of Africa and is based at the organisation’s headquarters in Abuja, Nigeria.