Badminton: Team Uganda Continues to Search for Olympics Points, Off to Cairo
The search for 2024 Paris Olympic games is still on untill late April this and Uganda’s Badminton stars are using each and every opportunity to see that they make it to the World famous event for the third time in history.
On Friday, a team of eight players (four girls and boys) and two coaches has been flagged off at National Council of Sports premises to go and represent Uganda in the Olympics games qualifier event in Cairo Egypt.
The team is representing the country in All Africa Senior championship for men dubbed Thomas Cup and Women dubbed Uber Cup.
The NCS Administrative Secretary, James Kasumba represented the General Secretary, Dr. Patrick Bernard Ogwel to flag off team Uganda that is departing to Cairo Egypt tomorrow [Saturday] morning (4:40am) boarding Egyptian Airlines.
“As NCS and government, we have priority sports and priority events, Olympics is among the priority events we have, so any team that is engaging in qualifiers towards that event, we take it very serious and the tournament as well. So today we have flagged off the badminton team, that needs points to qualify to the 2024 Olympics.” Says James Kasumba.
Kasumba also encouraged players to believe in themselves because they have been on such platforms, claiming that Egypt can scare them because they have good technical team and the training they got, the worst he believes they can return with at home is the silver medal if not a gold.
In the same line, the team Uganda coach, Kabindi William is optimistic that the time they spend in none residential camp will yield something from the championship.
“We are prepared, we have been in non Residential Camp but I would say that all players are really in high gear, we don’t have major injuries, I am sure we’re going to put up a very good fight even better than what we did the other time we had Thomas and Uber Cup here in Uganda.” Says coach Kabindi William.
Fadilah Shamika, the Africa’s number one in women category also believes she is ready to gather points she needs.
“I think I’m quite ready for the Africa championship because I have been training for this for the past one and half months and I really hope to put up a good performance and get the points I need to qualify for the Olympics.” Said Fadilah Shamika.
The team’s captain (women), Gladys Mbabazi also commented on their preparation.
“As a player, there challenges you might face if you are not prepared very well, so you have to take care of yourself mentally and physically so that when you are on court, you concentrate on what took you there. So within these past few days, we have been training as a team to make sure that we rectify our mistakes so that we perform better.” Gladys Mbabazi.
Fadilah Shamika is the lady with higher chances to be the first female player to represent Uganda in Olympics.
The last two times Uganda featured were the 2008 and 2012 in Beijing China and London UK, the the player was Edwin Ekiringi in both editions.
Traveling team:
Players:
Girls:
Gladys Mbabazi (captain), Fadilah Shamika, Tracy Naluwooza and Husina Kobugabe.
Boys:
Muyanja Amos (captain), Muzafaru Lubega, Expedito Emudu and Augustus Owinyi.