Hesron Kapanga
BERLIN – The Namibian Unified Basketball Team won a bronze medal in their division one play-off in the men’s mixed unified sports team competition at the Special Olympics World Games in Berlin, Germany on Saturday evening.
Namibia won the third-place play-off match 15-12 against Uruguay after 10 minutes of action at the Neptunbrunnen Berlin Centre.
The Namibian team that lost its semi-final game 7-21 earlier in the day against Korea came into the match against Uruguay as a much-improved outfit that was firing on all cylinders.
Uruguay put the points first on the scoreboard but that did not worry the Namibian boys who had set their eyes on the last silverware in their division.
Brilliant play in the opening two and a half minutes of that match saw Namibia leading the scoreboard 6-2, with goals from their unified partner Vincentius Boois who scored four points and Pepua Kambueza, who had two points.
Namibia stood their ground and extended their lead to 10-4 with less than three minutes left in the game as another unified partner Javier Nghishilenapo added three more points and Tjatanaurua Tjakuva add another point for Namibia’s comfortable lead at the time.
The Uruguay team started crawling back into the game after making some changes and were just a point behind the Namibian team at some stage of the game but once again brilliant combination from Boois, Kambueza, Tjakuva and Munouwa Haita saw the Namibian team adding more points to the scoreboard to finish the match as winners with a 15-12 score line.
After seven days of competition, Team Namibia has won four medals (one gold, two silver and a bronze) from athletics, track and field events, 3×3 unified men’s basketball and road cycling.
Meanwhile, Namibia’s female cyclist Vitjituaije Master missed out on a podium place in the five-kilometre ride after finishing fourth in that event on Saturday morning. The cyclist, who was also scheduled to compete in the 10km time trial, could not compete in that event as she fell sick after her first race. –Nampa