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Maun Traditional Martial Arts club has revealed that they are ready to battle it out at the upcoming Kung FU Martial Arts Championship billed for Cape Town (Rondebosch), South Africa from the 4th- 5th of March this year.
The competition will pit Botswana’s 10-18 year olds against those from Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Rwanda, Egypt, Uganda, Mozambique, South Africa and Mauritius. The championship is the brainchild of Cape Town’s own grandmaster, Muhammad Junaid Chafeker.
Maun Traditional Martial Arts club founder, Stephan Motlalepuo told Times Sport that their preparations for the tournament commenced last year with extensive training sessions. He said the postponement of the tournament from November last year gave them an opportunity to extend their training schedule.
Motlalepuo stated that they managed to engage a Zambian instructor, Victor Chiluya who taught the artists some new martial arts skills which he assured that they will apply during the tournament.
According to Motlalepuo, from his observations his team is ready to battle it out in the competition and bring home some medals. He expressed his confidence on his young martial artists indicating that the training sessions they held for the past time have been impactful on their performance.
“We only have few more weeks to prepare but I am confident that my team is ready for the competitions. From February we will have some extra day offs because it is challenging to train school kids, there has to be a balance between sports and their academics,” said Motlalepuo.
He said in February their training sessions will only run on Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays and as a way of affording the kids time for their studies.
Motlalepuo stated that initially they had a total number of 26 artists and their intention was to give all of them the opportunity to participate but because of financial constraints they settled only for 17 artists, among them being three girls. Motlalepuo explained that reducing the number of participating artists has however affected them as they had to change their training routines.
The founder has since appealed to the business community and different stakeholders to assist them with funds indicating that so far they have only secured sponsorship offers from Builders World and Savuti, Khwai, Linyanti (SKL) Group of Camps which are however not enough to cover all of their expenses.
Meanwhile, Motlalepuo has appreciated the management of different schools where his artists study, Parents Teachers Associations (PTA) for their usual support throughout their journey of preparing for the competition.
