She Cranes still haunted by training facilities

The national netball team the She Cranes last week entered a residential camp at the African Bible University in Lubowa, in their preparation for the Netball World Cup.

Despite the fact that the university arena   has a good floor surface,  the team will not be training from there.

This is because it is only designed for basketball where netball posts and rings cannot be fitted. This was only discovered after the UNF had already paid the residential fees.

“Originally we had selected African Bible  University, we thought that these basketball poles were adjustable but unfortunately they cannot adjust them, the space now remains small, so definitely we are going to move from here,” said Flavia Byekwaso the acting Uganda Netball Federation president.

Previously the She Cranes have been training from the TLC arena in Kamwokya, but have been affected by harsh weather conditions given the facility is not roofed and were also prone to injuries due to the rough floor surface.

Now that the TLC facility is ruled out, the team still cannot train from the AVRS Arena in Mpigi where they camped in some of their previous campaigns ahead of international competitions since it is very far from their residential camp.

This dilemma saw the UNF officials engage the State Minister for Sports Peter Ogwang to see that the indoor arena in Lugogo is available for the team training.

In case it is available, the team will still be fetched from Lubowa to Lugogo, for training, but the same arena is used by other sports disciplines including boxing, basketball, and badminton among others who book it for their competitions.

This among other reasons explains why for long the national team has braved crude training grounds to avoid disturbance.

Still the Lugogo indoor arena was recently rendered substandard and below par according to the International Netball Federation (INF) requirements given its lack of a sprung floor.

Despite its wanting state, the UNF is bent on using it for the she Cranes training since they have no other option.

During the launch of their residential training on Tuesday in Lubowa, the availability of this training facility was one of the requests made by the federation leaders to the state minister.

“While addressing us, the minister has promised he is going to talk to the National Council of Sports to make sure that Lugogo is always available to us during this training,” said Byekwaso.

Meanwhile, Ogwang said the government is set to include an indoor arena and a sprung floor facility at the Namboole stadium that is under construction to see that sports like netball, basketball, volleyball among others are catered for.

“We want to set up training facilities for netball, basketball. They are going to be in Namboole. A sprung floor is going to be put in Namboole for basketball, netball and volleyball,” he said.