Harare Province said they are ready for the National Association of Secondary Schools Heads (NASH) national track and field championships which roar to life next week in the small mining town of Bindura.
All the country’s 10 provinces will be gathered at Trojan Mine Stadium for the championships which are expected to start on Wednesday and end on Thursday.
Harare province said they will send a total of 131 athletes to compete in the track and field events.
Speaking to NewsDay Sport on Thursday, Apinos Chiwara, the head in charge of Harare Province said they have drawn out the athletes from 182 schools from Harare.
The athletes will compete in the Under-16, U-18 and U-20, events for both girls and boys.
“We had our provincial competition at the University of Zimbabwe last week where we selected the athletes we think will represent our province well.
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Our training started on Monday and we are satisfied with our preparations so far,” said Chiwara.
The province, who are training at Prince Edward High School grounds has stepped up preparations and has hired experts like Silas Muringai and Sebastian Garikai from Harare Athletics board to help with some technical issues.
“As I have said so far so good in terms of the preparations, and we will hold our mini competition here on Sunday to fine tune the team. We have hired able coaches outside the teaching fraternity in Amon Nyaundi and John Mlilo while Muringai and Garikai will help come in to give the youngsters some expertise in technical issues. Chiwara said they expect to do better this time around compared to the fourth position they garnered last year.
“Last year the cross-country and track and field events were combined and we struggled a lot. We are not good in long distances and our results from the cross-country event affected our final ranking,” said the confident Chiwara.
Job Jani, who romped to victory in the 400m flat and hurdles at the provincial competition last week, is expected to carry his good form to the national stage while Clive “Gringo” Zvandasara is expected to shine in the 200m category.
Other athletes who carry the provinces’ hopes are Mitchel Zuze (100m), Hosiah Goredema (5000m), Pamela Sithole (100m), Ralph Chidzedze (100m), Adrian Dune (1500) and Anthony Mpala (100m) while National Youth Games gold medalist Gerald Muchawa is expected to excel in the pole vault.