The ManicaPost
Ray Bande Senior Sports Reporter
PROSPECTIVE tennis players and coaches in areas surrounding Mutare will have less headache on training equipment after England-based SportAid recently donated 100 rackets and a stringing machine.
The donation, which came courtesy of by David Lloyd Westbridgeford in Nottingham, England after a charity event at the club, is mainly targeted at underprivileged youngsters who aspire to be future tennis players.
Silverback Tennis Academy Centre head coach, Tendai Chirochierwa, who received the equipment on behalf of beneficiaries, said the equipment would go a long in helping coaches and players go about their sessions efficiently.
“There is no doubt that this equipment will help us in training. It will make our job easier for both the coaches and the players during training. More importantly, this will also help local school that have been struggling to get proper equipment to use during training.
“It will certainly improve our pupil-racket ratio. We are also going to leave some of the equipment in schools so that they can use them when our academy coaches are not there,” he said.
The charity initiative was started by Zimbabwean, Tawanda Mushonga about 11 years ago and they collect used sport equipment, mainly for football and tennis, to donate to children in different African countries.
To date, more than 700 children have benefitted while numbers keep increasing.
Silverback Tennis Academy Centre, housed at St Dominic’s High School in Mutare is fast becoming a household name in nurturing grassroots talent in tennis in Mutare after Mantas Tennis Academy has been the only reputable tennis talent nursery in the eastern border city for a long time.
The academy now has 105 children training from Under-10s to 18.
Apart from training the game of tennis, players attached to Silverback Tennis Academy Centre, just like their counterparts at Mantas Tennis Academy, have a good chance to further their tennis and educational careers abroad.
“We have a good working relationship with Mantas Tennis Academy and I am happy that Silverback Tennis Academy Centre is fast evolving into the home grown academy that we all wanted it to be from day one,” said Chirochierwa, who also happens to be the first Mantas Tennis Academy head coach.
