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Four WSU basketball players have dribbled their way into the national team after helping both the men’s and ladies’ institutional teams finish 9th out of 16 teams overall in the USSA Championships that were held in Pretoria recently.
The quartet, Olebogeng Matabane, Keatlegile Ramorwesi, Sindiswa Mbiza and Giovanni Jaftha, are set to form part of the 16-member national basketball squad scheduled to participate in the upcoming Confederation of University and College Sports Association (CUCSA) Games.
The CUCSA Games take place biennially and involve 10 southern African nations, including Angola, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa.
Captain of the ladies’ team and third-year Sports Management student Sandisiwe Mbiza, who led the USSA tournament in rebounding, said the selection into the national team affirmed one of her most strongly-held beliefs.
“This selection has truly proved to me that when you’ve set your sights upon achieving something, and you invest the time, resources and hard work towards that goal, indeed you should achieve it. It’s a huge honour and I’m truly humbled to have been selected to represent my country – it’s a dream come true,” said Mbiza, who plays power forward.
She heaped praise upon her team following their ninth-place finish in the log standings, especially in light of the plethora of challenges facing the team’s preparations ahead of the tournament, which included the devastating effects of the Covid-19 outbreak; difficulties in assembling the different players owing to the sparsity of the campuses and different players’ commitments to their different work-integrated learning programmes.
First-year sports management student and men’s team captain Giovanni Jafta, who led the WSU team in its first ever showing at the USSA tournament, said he was pleased with the team’s showing considering it was their debut.
“We started off slowly in the tournament but we finished strongly as we played more matches because we started building familiarity and chemistry with one another in the match situation. But like I said, this is our first tournament ever and we can only improve from here,” said Jafta, who plays point guard.
It was in 2012 during his eighth-grade year in Cape Town that Jafta, a huge Lebron James fan, would have his first proper feel of a basketball – a decision that will see him dawning the nation’s famous green and gold almost 10 years later.
Proud and boastful of his troops, coach Sibusiso Williams, who was selected to coach the women’s under 17 national team following the USSA tournament, ran out of superlatives to describe the achievements reached not just by the quartet, but by his team as well.
He described the national selection of the four players as a “testament of the talent that WSU has within its ranks and a watershed moment for the basketball programme of the university”.
Matabane finished top of the overall point-scoring charts in the men’s division.
- Thando Cezula
