The Namibia Schools Sport Union (NSSU) team will depart later this week for the inaugural U/15 World School Sport Games in Belgrade, Serbia.
The tournament will see close to 2 500 students between the age of 13 and 15 from 42 countries competing in 14 sports disciplines.
Namibia will send a team of 17 athletes to the competition, with 11 competing in athletics and six in chess.
The NSSU is a member of the International School Sports Federation and will form part of the federations that will compete at the maiden tournament that gets underway this Saturday until 19 September.
NSSU national coordinator Solly Duiker yesterday told New Era Sport Namibia will use the upcoming event as a platform to further develop and expose talents at grassroots level.
“The aim of the tournament is basically to promote cross-cultural development and also create a platform which solely focuses on unearthing talent that is under the age of 15. In the past, the focus was only from U/18 and upwards but with this one, talent would be identified at that tender age of 15,” he explained.
In terms of preparations, Duiker said athletes have been preparing well, adding that the chess players had a competition recently, which was aimed at tightening their preparations.
“Preparations are well on course, most of them have been given a training schedule which they are following, so I believe we are ready for Serbia.”
– mkambukwe@nepc.com.na