By GWEN CHIPASULA –

ZAMBIA made a losing start at the Zone Six Under-16 Basketball Championships in Botswana.
The championship being hosted at the National Youth Centre in Gaborone saw the girls’ team whitewashed 36-106 by powerhouse Angola while the boy’s team lost 54-67 to Zimbabwe.
Pressure was on the girls and boys teams to win their second matches last night against Zimbabwe and Mozambique respectively to keep alive their hopes of qualifying for the Africa Cup finals.
The girls’ team will today play South Africa while the boys’ team takes a rest but returns to the courts tomorrow to face South Africa.
The tournament that has attracted Botswana, Angola, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe will see the winner in the men competition qualify to the Fifth FIBA Africa U16 to be held in Mali between June and July.
The winner in the womens category qualifies to the Fourth FIBA Africa U16 Women championship to be held in Madagascar.
Boys team coach Paul Mwale said the teams did not perform very well in the first half of the games and that might have cost them.
Mwale said in an interview from Gaborone that he was still hopeful that the teams will recover and win matches as the players showed a lot of hope.
“Yes the lads did not play well but we expect a better performance this evening (yesterday) as the teams play Zimbabwe and Mozambique. Not all hope is lost and we shall see how they play,” he said.
Mwale said morale was still high in camp as the defeat did not de-motivate the players but made them know work on avoiding mistakes that lost them the game.