•ZAMBIA’s Gosa Hamudulu tries to go past Ryan Maroun of South Africa during the Basketball match on Day Two of the CUCSA Games at Nasdec in Lusaka. Picture by JEAN MANDELA

By GRACE CHAILE –
ZAMBIA’S medal count at the 17th edition of the Confederation of Universities and Colleges Sports Associations (CUCSA) Zone Six Games rose to 22 as the competition came to a close last evening.
By press time yesterday, Zambia minted eight gold medals, six silver and eight bronze but finished in fourth place behind leaders South Africa, who amassed 32 medals, followed by Zimbabwe on 28 while Botswana had 25 medals.
The Zambian athletics team won 10 medals from which two were gold in discus and 4x400m women relay with two silver coming from discus and javelin while the rest were bronze won in long jump, women and men’s shot-put, women’s 100m, 1500m and triple jump.
South Africa led the athletics table with 30 medals with Botswana in second with 21 while Zimbabwe and Zambia scooped 18 and 10 respective with none for Malawi.
The Zambia women football team won gold after finishing top in the round robin system on 10 points same as Botswana, who got silver, owing to the hosts’ superior goal difference, while Mozambique got bronze after finishing on four points.
South African won gold in the men’s football after beating defending champions Namibia 2-0 as Zimbabwe settled for bronze after the CUCSA technical team awarded them a 3-0 scoreline after their opponents Botswana arrived 30 minutes late for the game.
In netball, Zambia won bronze after beating Namibia 53-44 while South Africa humbled Zimbabwe 60-37 in the finals to walk away with gold.
The Zambian men volleyball team reaped bronze after beating Lesotho 3-0 at Olympic Youth Development Centre (OYDC) and by press time, the final between Zimbabwe and Botswana was on.
It was another bad day for the women team as it lost its second game 3-1 to Zimbabwe and were yesterday expected to face Botswana in the final game.
Having already secured gold, the Zambia women basketball team thumped Zimbabwe 72-43 in the last game while the men were last evening expected to play in a medal decisive game against Angola at National Sports Development Centre (NASDEC).