MASERU — Newly-elected Lesotho Netball Association (LNA) president Moipone Mashale says she wants to push for sponsorship for the game during her term.
Mashale, 33, beat Lesemole Moletsane to win the LNA presidency during elections held at Victoria Hotel on Sunday.
Mashale was also recently elected Confederation of Southern African Netball Associations (Cosana) president in Namibia three weeks ago.
“I am going to be specifically campaigning for netball to have a long-term relationship with the business community in terms of sponsorship,” Mashale told the Lesotho Times on Monday.
She said she was going to work harder to ensure that the business world becomes familiar with the game of netball.
“For the past years we have all been making one big mistake, not telling the corporate world about ourselves,” Mashale said.
“We do not tell the corporate world our plans in detail. We only approach them when we’ve activities. They need to know our long-term plans, location and what we do as a sport code,” she said.
She said as a result netball and sport in general were suffering.
“We are also failing to attract long-term sponsors because we do not combine our efforts as sports administrators.
“For example, netball, volleyball, basketball and softball have similarities yet we have the same problem of lack of facilities.
“There is currently a new facility which can benefit all of us if we combine efforts and collectively approach businesses to help us improve it,” Mashale said.
“This is a long-term investment which can help about five sporting codes at once. We do not need to have one facility for each discipline because that money can be used for something else like development programmes,” she added.
Mashale said she will also work harder to ensure that LNA handles all netball matters from primary schools to national competitions.
“If we are to say that we want netball players to become professionals and play internationally, we need to start giving LNA all the powers to run the game from primary, high school and tertiary levels.”
Currently sports associations such as the Lesotho Institute of Sports Association, Lesotho Primary Sports Association, and Lesotho University and College Sports Association handle netball matters separately at primary, high school and tertiary level.
Mashale began her administrative career in netball in 2008 as a coach before being elected general secretary in 2009.
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