Tunisia’s junior men’s team
The new system of the age category competitions is aiming to attract the maximum number of participating teams from the whole continent through zonal qualifications for the four competitions; the men‘s and women‘s juniors, and boys’ and girls’ youth.
The CAVB Sports Organising commission (SOC) will have meeting in Cairo on November 14 and 15 to put the finishing touches on the new format needed and to activate National Federation (NF) interest in these kinds of competition which constitute the real future of African volleyball.
“We have to work hard to use the new advantages given by the FIVB through increases in the number of African berths at all the age category world championships,” CAVB President Dr Amr Elwani said. “We need to see all the affiliated NFs participating in these zonal qualifications because this will increase the local authority interest in the sport and take care of the grass roots.”
The World volleyball governing body, or FIVB, increased the African slots at all the age category World Championships to four berths at both the men’s junior and boys’ youth competitions and three at both women’s junior and girls’ youth.
The history of African volleyball has shown that the age group competition attracts the least attention from the NFs, in terms of the number of the participating teams at the biennial competitions. Now CAvb’S Aim is to increase the number of these teams at the finals and make participation available to everyone through the zonal qualifications which ensure the least cost to the NFs. Each qualification will take into consideration the geographical locations of participants and make sure it’s possible for teams to do all their travelling by road.
The new system will guarantee the qualification of 16 teams to the finals. Of these, 12 will qualify through the zones to join the top three teams from the last competition and the host of the competition.
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