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Sports Reporter
THE National Athletics Association of Zimbabwe have said they are looking forward to a busy schedule in 2018 with several competitions aimed at preparing athletes on the continent for major international events lined up.

The national association met over the weekend at their head office in Gweru for their general meeting where several issues were discussed, including next year’s competitions, the strategic plan and the budget.

Tagara yesterday said that they got a directive from the Confederation of African Athletics to host an international meet yesterday alongside Zambia, Botswana, South Africa and Mauritius and they are likely to take part in more events next year.

“We are to host an international meet next year. It’s a directive from the Confederation of African Athletics — Zambia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Mauritius each of us is supposed to host an international meet.

“Botswana will host theirs at the end of April and first week of May and ours is on the 26th of June, it’s a track and field meet. The objective is to have a series to help prepare our athletes for major international competitions.

‘’Like ours we are putting it in June in preparation of the Africa Senior Championships in August.

“South Africa should have theirs in March, Zambia end of March and Botswana have relays in February. Mauritius hold theirs on June 9 and they are all one-day competitions,” said Tagara. Other events the national association is looking at include the Africa Senior Championships and the Youth Olympic Games in Argentina.

The NAAZ president they are also looking at funding as they would want to attend all the meets.

“It means more demand for funding because we want to attend every meeting. And it means between February and March we should have a team for the World Junior Championships to prepare.

“We also have the African Youth Games. So it means preparations should start as early as yesterday,” Tagara said. The national association were also restructuring their committees — the finance committee, high performance committee and the marketing and fund-raising committee.

“We re-looked at the strategic plan, what we have achieved. And one of the successes is we said we need medalists at the African Juniors as an indication for 2020 and we got medals.

“We also looked at re-engineering each committee. Each committee is supposed to come up with their operational plan for 2018 to 2019. And they will present their reports on December 16. The financial statements were done and adopted,” Tagara said.

Tagara said although there were some successes this year they also faced challenges along the way such as funding with most of their committees operating below 70 percent.