THE Nemato Change a Life (NCAL) clubs offer four small Olympic sports: rowing, gymnastics (tumbling and trampoline), handball and fencing.
Sport is an important part of its youth empowerment programme and its athletes compete at provincial, national and even international level.
Rowing
Odwa Ntamo has been selected for the Olympic Development Squad and will go with the squad to England from today (April 27) to May 7. He is the first NCAL rower representing Nemato overseas.
Max Hobhouse and James Murrell of Radley College Boat Club in England did the long row from Radley to London to raise money to refurbish the Nemato eight. The boat is 12 years old and needed major maintenance and repair. The high costs were out of the reach of NCAL.
Gymnastics
Carol-Ann Stiekema had to close down the Sunshine Coast Gymnastics Club in Port Alfred as the rent for her clubhouse had become unaffordable.
Handball
A handful of Nemato handball players participated in a tournament in East London.
“We didn’t have a full team, but joined another team to finish third,” said Blom.
Fencing
Olympic fencer and internationally qualified fencing coach Sello Maduma was in Port Alfred for five days to coach NCAL fencers and coaches.
This was seen as a great opportunity to improve fencing knowledge and skills and to inspire fencers to aim for high results. A couple of the sessions were at Ingubo, a sister youth organisation to NCAL that also has a fencing club.
More details in this week’s Talk of the Town