Maurice Kambukwe
WINDHOEK – The national hockey and archery teams were yesterday bestowed their national colours by the Namibia Sport Commission (NSC), as they prepare to represent the country at international and continental events.
The women’s hockey team will be travelling to Valencia, Spain to compete in the Finals Olympic Women Outdoor Olympic qualifiers, which will determine who qualifies for Tokyo 2020.
There will be a total of eight teams partaking in the qualifiers, which will see Namibia and South Africa as the only two African teams there. Namibia is in Pool-A alongside Canada, Belarus and Spain. Namibia are actually ranked 47th in the world, while neighbours South Africa are 15th on the global rankings.
Speaking at yesterday’s press conference, Namibia Hockey Union (NHU) vice-president for women Marietta Stoffberg said the team has been hard at work and is ready to make the country proud at the qualifiers.
“It has been a long journey, which started of last year December when we qualified for the Olympic Women Outdoor qualifiers. Since then, the girls have been training nonstop. We had two warm up matches against Zambia and we won a convincing 2-1. The second game was against South Africa who beat us by 3-0 in Johannesburg,” said Stoffberg. Meanwhile, the national archery team will depart for Zambia on the 26th of this month to participate in the Africa Field Archery Championship. They will play against host nation Zambia, South Africa and Botswana. This event will be part of their assignment to qualify for the World Cup slated for Estonia. A total of four archers will represent Namibia at the Zambia event.