19 Mar 2025

The Botswana Boxing Association (BoBA) is looking to review boxing among women in the country.

Speaking on the sidelines of the Best of the Best Championship recently, BoBA president Gilbert Khunwane said clubs were not attracting as many women as they would have anticipated.

While the association's vision promotes recruitment of the girl child into boxing, Khunwane admitted that they had not done well in that area. He said the recruitment of the girl child into boxing must become part and parcel of their development path programmes.

He said their development path programmes were affected by the suspension of school sports, but expressed hope that the revival of school sports would help in their recruitment drive.

On the performance of boxers during the Best of the Best Championship, he said even though the tournament achieved its purposes, boxers’ technique and physical fitness were not up to par. He said that might prompt the association to visit clubs and inspect their programmes to establish whether their training was good enough to produce top boxers.

On the issue of match officials, he said BoBA referees and judges did their job diligently, even though some spectators cried foul that some boxers were robbed victories.

He also pointed out that it was not automatic that winners of the Best of the Best Championship would make it to the national team. He said the championship provided BoBA with a pool of boxers to choose from so that it became easy to select boxers for the national team.

He also decried that boxing was still struggling to get reputable sponsors and were currently depending on funding from the Botswana National Sports Commission and the Botswana National Olympic Committee through scholarships. He was hopeful that BoBA through its efforts would in future secure a credible sponsors so as to grow boxing. ENDS