Sports

Badminton coach slams preparation for Africa Senior Championship

Mr. Jacob Evans Wilson, Head Coach of the Ghana badminton national team, has expressed concern about the level of preparation the team ahead of preparation for the All Africa Senior Championships, from April 20-29, at the Alfred Diete Spiff Civic Centre, Port Harcourt in Rivers State, Nigeria.

The Port Harcourt championship, with 17 participating countries, would serve as the continental qualification for the African Games, to be held in August in Morocco and the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan.

Coach Wilson told the GNA Sports at the team’s training camp at the D.G Hathiramani Sports Hall at the Accra Sports Stadium ahead of departure that they had challenges with the facility they shared with other sports.

He said, it was worrisome for a team that had an important international assignment to be rotating the facility with other sporting disciplines, adding that they had no option than to agree to that arrangement since it was the only facility available.

According to Wilson, Mr. the situation compelled them to reduce the number of hours of training each day.

“As of now we have about three other disciplines namely; boxing, table tennis and taekwondo players training here; making training very difficult. Everybody is trying to use the hall, which is the only facility available,” he noted.

The experienced coach noted that, regardless of the challenges, the athletes were still determined and focused on the task ahead and were ready to deliver.

The team flew out of the country for the championship, which is made up of the Mixed Team Event on April 22-25 and the Individual Championship on April 26-28.

Team Ghana would be competing against teams from Algeria, Benin, Botswana, Congo, Congo DRC, Eritrea, Egypt, and the continent’s number one ranked team Mauritius.

Other participating countries are; Kenya, Cote d’Ivoire, Seychelles, South Africa, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe and the host country, Nigeria.

–GNA

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