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Collin Matiza Sports Editor
FORMER Zimbabwean middle-distance star runner Phillimon Hanneck is still interested in taking promising female athlete Enlitha Ncube to the United States to further her career there.
Hanneck, who is now based in Florida, United States, and has been living there for the past 24 years, recently indicated that he has now found two schools that would like to take 16-year-old middle-distance runner Ncube on board and he (Hanneck) was prepared to meet all her expenses during her stay there. Now a part-time athletics coach in the United States, the 43-year-old Hanneck has also been in touch with both the National Athletics Association of Zimbabwe and the US Embassy in Harare whom he told that he was prepared to be Ncube’s guardian during her stay in America.

“I am trying to support Enlitha Ncube (by) trying to bring her to the United States to finish her high school. She has two schools that are prepared to take her on board and one of them is a private school. The first one is Episcopal School of Jacksonville in Florida and the other one is Atlantic Coast High School which is a 4A public school.

“I will be her guardian and will help with everything so that she will have a better future in her academics and athletics career.
“I am 100 percent sure that she will get an athletics scholarship at a university college here in America under my support. Let’s put our minds together and help the youth, that’s where it begins. I went through a lot for more than a decade with the administrators in Zimbabwe but I kept going and got what I want around the world,” Hanneck recently said from his base in Florida. NAAZ president Tendai Tagara recently told The Herald that Hanneck had been touch with them regarding his wish to take young Ncube to the United States but “there is still a lot of paperwork to be done” for her to be able to go there.

Tagara said all the “relevant authorities”, including Ncube’s parents, have to give their thumbs-up for her to be put under the custodianship of Hanneck in the United States as she is still regarded as a minor.