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Sports Reporter
THE Sports Leaders’ Institute of Zimbabwe will this month hold the fourth edition of the sports management summer camp in Masvingo with 300 delegates expected to attend. The three-day camp will run from November 24 to 26 under the theme “Physical Education Enhancing Sport, Health and Wellness”. SLIZ director Russell Mhiribidi said the topics were drawn from recommendations by participants from the previous camps.

“Each camp is different because we hold them as part of continuing education programmes for sports people, we found out that the world over, they embark on these camps as part of that so that our leaders are kept in line with existing current trends in sport. What’s going to be new is this course is that we have actually come up with topics that we have taken from what the previous participants from the previous winter and summer camps recommended that they want to hear. We are not being prescriptive, we are actually reacting to a need,” Mhiribidi said.

Some of the topics to be discussed during the workshop include current global trends in physical education and sport, event management and sport nutrition and athlete performance. They will also look at the new principles, concerns and values of the new curriculum, which embraces sport as a key component of education.

“I think the highlight of the camp is going to be the talk on event management and the talk on sport nutrition and athlete development, those are going to be our main highlights. And in our country we are now embarking on a new curriculum, it’s very important that everyone who is involved in sport understands what the new curriculum is. We are inviting people who will come to talk about the new curriculum from the Ministry of Sport and the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education.

“But we also think that for the new curriculum to be a success it requires a lot of input from other stakeholders in sport over and above the school teachers themselves. Even the universities must clearly understand it, even associations and clubs officials must understand because the new curriculum deals with development of the athletes at their formative stage. So basically that is it,” Mhiribidi said. The SLIZ director said they are hopeful of a huge turnout as the event has continued to grow over the years with delegates from as far as Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia expected to be part of the camp.

“When we started we had only five participants and 11 facilitators. And we soldiered on and I think the next camp had 45 participants, then the next one had 89, so getting to 300 to 350 is no mean achievement. I think the quality of the product and the deliverables that participants get, practical stuff that is Zimbabwe-related is what has been driving the product and we are growing both in numbers and in quality,” Mhiribidi said.