By SHAMAOMA MUSONDA –

THE Zambia Volleyball Association (ZAVA) has said the national team has learnt valuable lessons from the on-going FIVB World Cup qualifiers in Kenya which the country can build on.
ZAVA general secretary Charles Haambote said in an interview yesterday after Zambia suffered a third successive defeat that quashed the team’s hopes of making a maiden appearance at the World Cup finals to be staged in Poland.
Haambote said that the Zambian team that lost to Botswana, Egypt and Cape Verde was a youthful side that can only get better.
“We knew it would be a tough tournament for us considering the levels of investment in the sport by other countries participating at the games. It’s otherwise been a big learning lesson for our players and coaching team,” Haambote said.
Zambia lost its third match in as many games at the championship after going down 3-0 to reigning African champions Egypt with set scores of 25-13, 25-15, 25-15 to anchor Group U with no point.
The Zambian team had earlier lost 3-0 to Zone-Six champions Botswana before falling to Cape Verde 3-1 in a match ZAVA president Gabriel Muyinda said exposed the team frailties both on the court and the bench.
Zambia has never been to this stage of the qualifiers for the World Cup before and the last group in which Haambote and Terence Chibula played in only qualified to this stage but never travelled for the game due to financial constraints in the mid-1990’s.
Haambote said going for the qualifiers was a big step by Zambia and that with the players being young, the heights that they could scale could even be higher than what the country has seen.
“Zambia has never been to this stage since our playing days in the 1990s. But we as ZAVA are pretty happy to expose the players to such high levels of competitions. They now know where they have to get and will have to work hard,” he said.