By SANDRA MWILA –
BADMINTON Zambia (BZ) has expressed happiness with the players’ performance during the just ended International tournament held at the Olympic Youth Development Centre (OYDC) in Lusaka.
The pair of Juma Muwowo and Ogar Siamupangila won silver in the mixed doubles event while the team of Mark Banda and Evelyn Siamupangila, Mulenga Chongo and Mary Chilambe won bronze for reaching the quarterfinals.
BZ general secretary Kingsley Mulenga in an interview at the weekend said the Zambian players performed well despite most of them failing to storm finals in the various categories.
Mulenga said it was encouraging for Zambian players to reap silver and bronze at a competition that had some World great players.
“The Zambian players did very well at the International Badminton tournament, they played against the World best players and it’s a great achievement for them to mint silver,” he said.
Mulenga said it was impressive to see Zambian players put up a good display regardless of the many hiccups experienced during the tournament.
He explained that due to the financial constraints, some Zambian players that were participating in the tournament were subjected to officiate some of the games.
“It was encouraging to see Zambian players do well by reaching mostly quarter finals despite the hiccups, we had financial challenges and some players were officiating some of the games before playing which was very disturbing,” Mulenga said.
Mulenga singled out coach Muwowo for playing well despite being out of action for a long time.
“Muwowo is a coach and he has not played badminton in a long time but he managed to put up a good performance,” he said.