BABY SPAR PROTEAS CONTINUE ON A WINNING STREAK AFTER THREE MATCHES

Day two of the Netball World Youth Cup 2025 Regional Qualifiers started off with Namibia taking on Tanzania. Both teams came into the second day with one defeat each after losing their respective matches on day one.

Chrisina Mkwanda of Namibia started with a stronger line up and this began to pay off for the team as the team displayed their dominance against Tanzania. The Nambian Desert Jewels were eager to secure maximum points this morning and earn bragging rights. At the end of the match, it was Namibia who ended their winless streak and took the match 55 -17.

Second match was another tough encounter between Tanzania and Zimbabwe. Tanzania came into this match after losing their opening match against South Africa while Zimbabwe won against Kenya. Zimbabwe were still high in confidence from their win, and this was evident in how they approached the match; however, Tanzania was not going down without a fight. At halftime, the score was 23 – 17 to Zimbabwe. Both teams battled it out to the end however it was Zimbabwe that claimed all the maximum points winning the match 42 -37.

At the end of day one, Baby SPAR Proteas Head Coach Precious Mthembu had mentioned that their encounter with neighbours Zimbabwe would be a tough one, this was the case when the two countries clashed for the third match of the day. South Africa came into this match after two back-to-back victories yesterday and Zimbabwe had won their earlier encounter with Tanzania in the day.

Coach Precious understood the task ahead of her as she started with a strong combination on the day. At the end of the first quarter, only seven goals separated the two nations as South Africa were 14 goals ahead of Zimbabwe’s seven.

Second quarter continued same way the first one ended with both teams giving as much as they received, Zimbabwe clawed back and reduced the gap however the Baby SPAR Proteas were not about to surrender their lead and had to dig deep to take the game back to Zimbabwe – at the end of the quarter, Baby SPAR Proteas had scored 18 goals and conceding nine, taking the overall score to 32 – 16 in favour of South Africa. In the end the Baby SPAR Proteas continued their winning streak making it three out three and won the match 62 -29 .

The last match of the day was between the two countries who were in search of the illusive win. Both Tanzania ana Zambia have lost their two respective games and one of them was hoping to break losing streak and it would boil down to who wanted it more.

Zambia seemed to be the hungrier one of the two as they were quick to get off the mark and put their opponents under immense pressure. At the end of the first quarter, they were leading 15 – 4. Coach Malama’s team (Zambia) were going for broke in the second quarter of the match as they looked to solidify and extend their lead. At halftime, they had restricted their opponents to only scoring four while they netted twelve which brought the score to 27 – 8.

Zambia eventually won their first match after three matches beating Tanzania 52 – 15. It was their discipline and resilience that got them over the line at the end of it all.

ENDS

Tuesday, 19 March 2024 Fixtures

08:00 – South Africa v Kenya

10:00 – Malawi v Tanzania

16:00 – Kenya v Malawi

18:00 – Zimbabwe v Namibia