Women’s team step up preps for Afrobasket contest

The senior women basketball national team has intensified it’s preparations at Amahoro indoor stadium ahead of the 2009 Fiba Africa Women Basketball Championship which will be played in the first half of September in Madagascar. The team’s head coach Vaceslav Kavedzija, who has been taking the girls through rigorous drills for the last one week, always closes the day’s sessions with a sprint race on the Amahoro stadium track. He says, the essence of the continuous sprints is to enhance the players’ endurance and perseverance. Honore Ayebare, who emerged the Most Valuable Player at this year’s Fiba-Africa Zone V qualifiers held in Kigali early this year, was most active in yesterday’s drills. Rwanda dislodged Kenya as the region’s female basketball queens when they beat them twice in the Zone 5 qualifiers that were staged in Kigali last month thanks in part to Ayebare’s outstanding performances throughout the entire championship. Rwanda’s men’s team finished second to Egypt in the Zone 5 qualifier to qualify for the Fifa-Afrobasket Men’s Championship held last month in Tripoli, Libya where they ended in ninth position out of 16 teams. Angola beat Ivory Coast in the final to take their record tenth African title. Both team also qualified for the Fiba World Championship scheduled for August 28 – September 12, 2010 in Turkey. Ends

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Women’s team step up preps for Afrobasket contest