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Ellina Mhlanga Senior Sports Reporter
THE National Athletics Association of Zimbabwe is continuing with its capacity-building programmes for coaches with another World Athletics Level Course scheduled for April.

They had another one in Harare in December in Harare and for the upcoming course, they are targeting 15 coaches for the upcoming course to take place at White City Stadium.

NAAZ president, Tendai Tagara, said the ultimate goal is to have qualified coaches from the lowest level to ensure athletes get the right basic foundation from an early age.

“The ultimate goal we want to make sure that at least at every zonal level there is a qualified coach. Now we can safely say that in every district there is a qualified coach that was one of our objectives, we have achieved that, so now we are moving to say at a zonal level with a maximum of 10 to 20 schools there is a qualified coach.

“The level one that’s where they coach the basic skills and we want these kids to get the basics as early as possible. Then it also helps spreading the kids athletics, which is the pillar for the retention of kids in the sport of athletics.

“The course looks at biomechanics, physiology, and anatomy as part of the theory. It also looks at philosophy, then the application of coaching, coach to coach, whereby besides being coached by the lecturer coaches must be able to coach themselves and then on-course assessment, factual assessment and then theory test,” said Tagara.

The NAAZ president said everything should be in place by the end of this month in preparation for the course.

“We are targeting first-time international coaches. We were given an international course of which we trained half that number due to Covid, we had a limited number, so we are only targeting about 15 coaches for the course. Remember in December we had another one, so this is another compliment.

“So far eight places have already been taken and we want to make sure by end of this month everything will be in place,” said Tagara.
The lecturer to lead the course will be confirmed by World Athletics in due course.