YOUNGS PERFECT TO SAVE TENNIS IN TANZANIA

By Haruna Ramadhani

Kijitonyama Tennis Club head coach Mussa Haruna has insisted that only young generation can be used to save tennis in this country because they are more flexible and available than other ages.

The coach to stress that has asked parents to allow and support their children who seem to be interested in the sport.

“A parent who doesn’t support his/her child in the sport he/she is interested is a poison to child’s development,” Coach Mussa said.

Kijitonyama Tennis Club which uses the grounds owned by University of Dar-es-salaam to train they have been faced by a couple of challenges including trainees’ inconsistency.

“We started with almost 200 children but they never been consistent, we now have 20 or 25. At first the sport was lacking teachers, but now many teachers no trainees. You can how crazy is it,” emphasized Mr. Mussa.

Nevertheless the club have reached some successes including contributing players to the camped team for African Junior Championship (AJC) which expected to start next week at Gymkhana. The winner teams will be qualifying for African competitions.

“We have contributed at least 5 players, 3 girls and 2 boys who are now in the camp for AJC,”

In the other hand the trainees have never hesitated to be grateful to their coaches for their time and skills they give. 

“We appreciate them (coaches), they are very important to ourselves and our talents. They surely need us to be perfect in this sport. We love them a lot,” said Joyce John(13) who has joined the club just a month ago.

Joyce kept on adding that in the coming days Tanzania will have the likes of Mariah Sharapova and Victoria Wawrinka if the effort will be well put in tennis.

“I’m sure we have many Sharapovas and Wawrinkas of the coming days but not by relaxing and ignoring,” added Joyce

Meanwhile the assistant Coach Mr. Francis Knoute has gone direct to the reason as why many children fail to attend the club as failing to afford the training fee demanded by the grounds’ owners.

“From 200 to 25 trainees is very big step behind but you can’t stop it because some of them couldn’t afford to pay the fee. 50,000/= Tsh per year not many families can afford. It’s a challenge I can say,” Said Mr. Kanoute.

May be if we could have more free grounds hence the can train for free but for this we’ll still be having a low number of tennis trainee in our club,” he added.