We’d like to develop our athletes and provide opportunities for them to compete and represent the province at national and international championships.
THE NEWLY-elected permanent executive board of Athletics Griqualand West (AGW) have pledged to bring resources to bear on development, host prestige events and ramp up technical capacity in the organisation.
AGW president Lorato Banda and deputy president Ockie Vermeulen enthused about the election of the new board. The new AGW executive ends the five-month long tenure of the interim board had presided over the association’s affairs.
“Five months ago there were resignations on the board which lead us to have a very dysfunctional board. The members of the federation, the clubs, decided that we should have an interim board which will take us to the election of the permanent board,” said Banda.
“As the new board there are at least a few things that we’d like to focus on. One of them is development. We’d like to develop our athletes and provide opportunities for them to compete and represent the province at national and international championships.
“We also want to host national events here in the province where we can have elite athletes competing. We will also focus on building the technical capacity of the federation to make sure that our officials have the technical know-how to help us host competitive events,” he added.
Vermeulen, who was elected to the deputy presidency of AGW is a former additional board member who served with a previous permanent board during 2012-15. Vermeulen, similar to Banda, has come through the ranks of AGW’s structures. Both have served at club level.
Banda himself is an active athlete who has , amongst others, taken part in prestigious athletics events such as the Comrades and Two Oceans marathons.
Vermeulen, among others, commented as follows about his election: “I have been around in the running fraternity for the last 10 to 12 years, mostly then as chairman of the club. I’ve been part of the board on a previous occasion (before the current board).
“I thought with the new board coming in I could use the opportunity to pull my weight and use the experience and come in with institutional memory.
“Above all, I want to contribute in terms of establishing structures at club and school level to see how we can broaden the base of people in clubs who can become good administrators. This will help us get the sport to a sound administrative level.
“That’s important so that we have the right people in place on the corporate governance side of things. We have to make sure that you have a pipeline of people always there with new skills, technical ability and so on coming in. If we don’t do that our athletes will then suffer.
“We must have good healthy clubs, which will be a good breeding ground for our athletes to perform so that it will help us increase the number of athletes who represent us at national events and increase the number of medals we bring to the province.”
Both Banda and Vermeulen have been with AGW for and extended period.
“You can say we are organic coming from inside the organisation, All of us are ultra marathon athletes, We know what it means to be supported at the level of an athlete, Hopefully we can translate that to good administratorship,” Vermeulen said.
The federation does not have a sponsor at present. “One of our focus areas would be on that aspect of the sport. Athletics South Africa (ASA) has already supported our initiative to the extent that I am confident we will have some of them (sponsors) on-board by year end,” said Banda.
The new executive said they aim to have two to three athletics events happen as soon as in March when they hope the Covid-19 situation would have eased. Other than those plans the association aims to have several short, medium and ultra-distance events and cross country competitions on the go by the second half of the year.
The rest of the new AGW board are Marissa Kruger, Gavin Pietersen, Piet Mokwena, Thataitsile Moremedi, Keith Blanket and Mase Mogorosi.
Associate AGW members such as the SA Schools Association and the Sol Plaatje University will in time nominate their own board representatives.
