Clive Thabo Dube and John Ndlovu
INSIDE the heart of Bulawayo, a new male junior club is sprouting up from the trenches to wipe up the city off its feet. Adam Ralstein”s grassroots football outfit ,BG Rising Stars aims to change the football landscape in Bulawayo and beyond.
Founded in 2016 the Barham Green based side will this year join the ranks of junior football.
“BG Rising Stars started off with twelve youngsters on the 21st of July 2016 and we managed to increase the number of players to forty-eight. Our aim was to equip children and the youth with technical football skills and physical performance.” Said Ralstein.
The forty-one year old former Gifford High School student told Zim GBC News that the club was also established to keep young people off the streets.
“Another thing which pushed us to establish this club is the desire to keep the youth off the streets and help them also to change their mindset and groom them to be better people.”Added Ralstein.
Ralstein also said the junior standards in Zimbabwe have dropped dramatically especially on goalkeepers due to the fact that youths and children nowadays have many options such as spending most of their time on social media and video gaming henceforth abandoning soccer.
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“The junior football standards have depreciated sporadically nowadays due to the fact that students have many options that they focus their attention on such as social media and video gaming which therefore forces them to abandon soccer, mushrooming of other sporting codes has also led to decrease in junior football standards.”The BG Rising Stars boss said.
Rising stars hope to be a conveyor belt for young talent being fed to professional leagues.
“Since we are quite cash strapped, our preliminary aim is to equip youngsters with skills and then try to be a feeder to Division one and Zimbabwe Premier league feeder for example one of our boys who is a goalkeeper went to Mountain Climbers whilst the other player went to Botswana where he was snatched by one of the Division one side there.”He said