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Ellina Mhlanga Sports Reporter
JUDO Association of Zimbabwe technical director Steve Pearson is next week expected to fly out to Morocco for a technical course organised by the African Judo Union.

The two-day course is scheduled for December 21 and 22 in Casablanca and Zimbabwe will be represented by Pearson. JAZ president Smart Deke said his participation is key to their developmental programmes since the sport is still growing on the local scene.

“We want him to go and learn so that he comes back and implement. The course includes how to set up a team, how to select and how to assess a team. It’s very crucial and this is going to be very important for us since he is the JAZ technical director. This course is organised by the African Judo Union and if he goes and acquires knowledge it means we will be in the same level with the other African countries,” said Deke.

The course comes at a time when the national association is working on decentralising the sport to other provinces. And JAZ has also engaged the services of Japanese coaches who are in the country on a voluntary-basis to assist in their bid to spread the sport throughout the country. Deke said they are making some strides in that area but conceded they still have a long way to go to fulfil their mandate.

“For us as a new executive I think this is the best year that we can say we did so much. When we came into office our mandate was that we wanted to grow and decentralise the sport to provinces. For now we have managed to reach three provinces. So far we have Mashonaland Central, Mashonaland West and Bulawayo. But we still have a long way to go.

“Mutare is also one of our biggest focus next year, we had two coaches who came from Japan Takumi Fujiwara and Shintaro Uyemura. We managed to meet the Japanese Ambassador and we talked about judo in Zimbabwe. He is keen to help.

“We are also going to ask for one more coach, maybe to assist in Bulawayo,” said Deke. As they shift their focus t0 2018, Deke said they have other areas they want to improve such as increasing the numbers of their officials.

“We don’t have enough officials because like next year we want to have the Japanese Ambassador Cup where we want to make it international. We want to invite other countries, where we are going to have four mats at the same time so for us to do that we need to have enough table officials, referees and someone who will be able to do the draw sheets,” said Deke.