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Sports Reporter—

TEAM Zimbabwe’s chef de mission at the African Union Sports Council Region Five Under-20 Youth Games currently underway in Luanda, Angola, Chiedza Mafunga has expressed satisfaction with the team’s efforts so far.The curtain comes down on the event on Sunday and on Wednesday Zimbabwe were second on the medals table with 84 medals.

Going into the Games Zimbabwe were hoping to surpass their previous performances at the regional Games, where they have always come second behind South Africa except in 2012 when they finished on position eight.

However, speaking from Angola, Team Zimbabwe chef de mission, Chiedza Mafunga said it’s a tightly contested competition with most countries showing improvement from the previous edition.

“Top spot is desirable. However, South Africa is already dominating with swimming having started yesterday (Wednesday). But the team has done exceptionally well considering the preparation period we had.

“It’s a tightly contested competition this year. Most countries have invested in their junior sport development. There has been some major dilution to South Africa’s domination of most events.

“We are definitely in the running to defend our (second) position,” said Mafunga.

With athletics, which won most medals and judo competitions over, Zimbabwe are now pinning their hopes in swimming, tennis, netball and football. Gymnastics had secured a bronze medal on Wednesday.

Swimming started on Wednesday and they managed to pick three silver medals and an equal number of bronze medals on the first day of their competition.

The silver medals came from the 4x100m free style girls relay, 4x100m free style boys relay and the 4x100m mixed relay. Devyn Leask settled for bronze in 200m freestyle girls as well as Robyn Lee in the 200m butterfly girls and Chase Onorati in 100m free style boys.

The basketball team got a silver medal while the football teams will battle it out in the semi-finals today.

The boy’s team has a date against Swaziland while the girls take on South Africa. For the boys, their chances are looking good after managing two wins in the round-robin matches. They beat Swaziland and Angola before losing 0-3 to Zambia on Wednesday.

It’s a different case for the girls as they lost all their matches against Angola, Namibia and South Africa. Their biggest defeat was against South Africa as they were thumped 0-6. However, they will still go for the semi-finals as there are only four countries taking part in each of the two sections — boys and girls.

Tennis has already won four medals — one gold and three bronze. They complete their competition tomorrow with team events.