By SHAMAOMA MUSONDA In Bulawayo –
ZAMBIA yesterday got off to a dream start in tennis after Lwanga Lumbeta and Idah Longwe braved the scotching conditions to cruise to the quarter-finals of the 2014 Africa Union Sports Council (AUSC) Youth Games in Zimbabwe.
With temperatures reaching highs of 30 degrees celsius, Zambia enjoyed great fortunes as Lumbeta and Longwe reached the last eight of the boy’s and girls’ singles respectively.
The two players were watched by among others, Zambia’s Deputy Ambassador to Zimbabwe Mwenya Mushili and director of sports Bessy Chilemu, who was left excited with the showing of the two and urged them to work even harder so they bring medals to Zambia.
The star of the day was Longwe who tore her Malawian opponent Winnie Kadamimanja to shreds with a merciless 2-0 bashing with the game taking just 29 minutes.
Longwe dispatched Kadamimanja with scores of 6-1, 6-0, the biggest margin seen at the tennis club and set her on an exciting path where she is to play the winner of the match between Mpho Kotzie of Lesotho and Zimbabwe’s Rufaro Chirewa in the quarters.
After the game, Longwe pledged to work even harder knowing that the competition will keep rising at every stage.
In the boy’s category, Lumbeta came from a set down to beat Armando Nhavene of Mozambique 2-1 in an exciting game. Lumbeta carried the day with set scores of 2-6, 6-1, 6-2 to book his passage to the quarters at the expense of the Mozambican exciting player.
“I started slow because I was not moving my feet a lot and there were other games playing on my left and on my right, so that noise unsettled me a bit. But after I acclimatised, I was able to move around and became aggressive,” he said.
He next plays the winner between Amon Kudzai of Namibia and Francios Kellerman of South Africa for a place in the semi-finals.
The other two Zambian players Mwaza Ngulube and Jackson Kalaba were waiting for their opponents to get through the preliminaries for pre-quarter-final matches.