NICOLE CRAMPTON
Three promising athletes were awarded funds towards their tuition fees by the Continuing Education (CE) programme on 10 March 2010 at the University of Pretoria. Lawrence Ntswane, a football player, along with two cricket players, Andrew Rasemane and Frederick Lebeloane, were the fortunate athletes.
The CE will continue to support them financially until they leave the academy and this has as significantly changed the lives of the three athletes. It is hoped by the CE that these three athletes, as well as other athletes from the programme, will reach international level in their respective sports. The combination of talent, good sport facilities, coaching and sport science is hoped to enable the athletes to reach this goal.
The TuksSport Academy has been accelerating the development of young athletes since 2002. It currently has 190 school pupils and 121 students studying at the University of Pretoria or at the CE programme. TuksSport, based at the High Performance Centre on the LC de Villiers campus, transfers young athletes from their original schools and places them in a controlled environment at the CE. These athletes are between the ages of 13 and 18 and occupy the top ranking position in their respective age groups.
Deon Herbst, CEO of CE programme, says, “It has been a fantastic opportunity for us as a company to give back to the youth of the country. These talented young men have a lot of potential and we are glad that we can in some way make a difference to their future.” While many similar programmes overseas are subsidised to provide equal opportunities for all athletes, the CE programme is fully dependant on commercial support.
Perdeby will definitely be keeping an eye on the new additions to the CE programme as well as the existing members.
