Basmal cancels U-20 national team camp

Basketball Association of Malawi (Basmal) has cancelled Under-20 national team’s final special camp training ahead of the Zone V1 Games in Zimbabwe between December 5 and 15 due to financial constraints.

The junior basketball national team, which last conducted training session at Blantyre Youth Centre at the end of July, has been having on-and-off training camps since June and was expected to regroup this weekend.

However, Basmal general secretary Dalitso Tepetheya said yesterday that they will now wait for the Sports Council to indicate dates for the camp training alongside football, athletics, judo, lawn tennis and paralympics squads.

“Of course, we needed to have more camp trainings to identify players for national duties, but now we are unable to hold the camp as planned this weekend. We will just wait for the council to tell us when to regroup,” he said.

According to the national team coach, Hope Chisamanga, the initial camp training had about 30 players, but the squad was trimmed to 18. The final squad will have 12 players.

Nevertheless, council sports development officer Ruth Mzengo said they are yet to agree on the dates for the final group camp. But she said it will be very soon.