When its netball time is carnival time in the gold rich town of Shamva, which is slowly scripting a glorious sporting story.
Until Premier Soccer League side Simba Bhora returned home to Shamva after the completion of renovations at Wadzanayi Stadium, the small town was hardly regarded as one of the sports centres of the country.
The Premier Soccer League side, who are on the brink of clinching their first league title, are now the main weekend entertainment and are claiming space in national sports bulletins.
Weekends are no longer as mundane as they were just a few years ago. Shamva is burning bright.
It is finally flourishing sports wise with Premier League football gripping the town every fortnight.
But soon it will not only be about Simba Bhora as another project is taking shape being built from gold magnet, Samson Paul Nyati’s pocket.
Nyati is slowly and meticulously building what he wants to be one of the big hitters in the Netball Premier League.
He has dedicated his heart and soul to constructing a fierce netball force by putting together and developing the talents that Shamva has to offer.
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The foundations of Nyati Queens are anchored in school tournaments where Nyati brings together dozens of budding stars for a day of fun and fierce competition.
Three such tournaments have already been conducted so far this year and the next one is slatted for next month.
“I do mining in Shamva. I make money in Shamva, so I thought I should find ways of giving back to the community that has given me so much,” Nyati told The Sports Hub.
“So I thought I should find ways of uplifting the community and I decided to fund the development of netball. I thought well there is so much happening for the boys, they have more sporting opportunities than the girls that’s why I decided to go into netball and open up more life opportunities for the girls.
"It’s important that they play a lot of competitive matches, that’s why we regularly have tournaments where we have about 14 schools competing. We also buy kits for these schools. Some of the schools didn’t even have a playing kit so we decided to motivate them by kitting the kids out," he said.
He said that when they gather for these tournaments, the town comes to a stand still.
"When we have these tournaments it’s such a big thing because besides the netball we also invite some musicians so that its quite a carnival atmosphere. We have a lot of people coming in to watch these kids and the competition is so intense. We will be having another competition in November and we are inviting a big music artist and we are hoping to bring in some inspirational figures in sport.
"These kids need to feel appreciated. The tournaments we hold are so big such that we have schools from other areas asking to come in and compete and this helps in increasing the level of competition," declared Nyati.
They will soon test themselves against some of the best netball playing schools.
"We want to keep on exposing these players and aid their development. We have started steps towards sending our players to Harare to play some of the top netball schools. They should feel that they can step up and compete with anyone. So we have a lot of big plans and we are aiming to make Shamva the hub of netball in Zimbabwe.
“The aim is to develop netball in the area so that at the end we will have a team in the Netball Premier League competing for honours. So we are building towards that, we are identifying players at these tournaments and absorbing them into the club. The players that we pick from schools also benefit more because we pay school fees for them.
"At the moment we have 11 players that are in school whom we are paying school fees for. So it’s not just about netball, we also want them to excel academically. If they can do well both in the academics as well as in sport, they find themselves with more options in life," he said.
Nyati’s dream for the community of Shamva go beyond netball as he plans to foray into boxing once he has achieved the ambition of Nyathi Queens playing in the Premier League.
“Once we have Nyati Queens playing in the Premier League and hopefully have our players breaking into the national teams, my next project will be boxing. Boxing is my passion. We will invest in boxing for the girls again; we can create champions from this community,” he revealed.
Nyati wants Shamva to be a big part of Zimbabwe’s sporting story and he is a creating a fairy tale with Nyati Queens.
