Good news to tall people! Volleyball Association of Malawi (VAM) will soon embark on an exercise to identify more players to build strong men’s and women’s national teams for future competitions.
This follows the current national teams’ poor display at the recent World Volleyball Qualifiers at the African Bible College in Lilongwe where they suffered three defeats each to bow out of the competition with no point.
According to VAM publicist Ronald Mpaso, the teams failed to make the grade in the contest mostly because all their opponents had taller players who comfortably resisted pressure from diminutive Malawians.
“We have learned a lot of tricks from this competition and one of them is the importance of having tall players in our squads. We were the only side with very few tall players in the recent event and this negatively affected our performance.
“Soon, we will start a deliberate programme to identify taller players. Of course, our teams have improved as compared to the past few years. We believe the teams will improve further if we bring in taller players,” he said.
He said they are also in the process of introducing the sport in primary, secondary and tertiary educational institutions to attract interest from their desired prospective players.
Mpaso said they would try to approach some tall netball players to beef up the ladies national team.
But one of the national team players, who asked for anonymity, told Nation on Sunday that the Malawi teams’ poor showing was due to lack of good infrastructure for the sport in the country.
“Most national team players come from the Southern Region where volleyball courts are in a pathetic state. With that setback, do you think we can beat teams that practise on well-manicured courts in their respective countries?” he wondered.
Malawi national teams made their second appearance in the World Volleyball Qualifiers after contesting in a similar event in Mozambique in 2009 when they lost all their three games by straight sets.
