SPORT
Frans Matloga
Player, coach and administrator
Ettienne van Rensburg
What the 51 year old Matome Frans
Matlogo has forgotten about basketball, others still need to learn. As a
skilled player, coach and administrator – with more than two decades of
experience under his belt, Frans is
a force to be reckoned with within
the Department of Sport on the Vaal
Campus. Under his guidance and
coaching the Campus’s volleyball,
basketball and chess teams are
moulded into competitors of note.
Frans is passionate about sport
and the role he is playing towards
vesting the NWU Vaal as a sporting
campus. “There are very few competitive leagues in the Vaal Triangle
region and therefore I will take it
upon myself to develop the necessary infrastructure,” says Frans and
ads that he plans to liaise with the
Department of Education in this regard. According to Frans the current
men’s team is very strong but he is
experiencing difficulty in organising
a women’s team – the latter due to
students completing their studies
or leaving the area to pursue other
interests. The Campus currently
competes in the Gauteng Universities Basketball league, but did not
qualify for the USSA championship
due to changes made to the league
stipulations.
28 - Student 24/7
“The stipulations chanced during the
period in which the students were
on recess and as a result, we could
not implement the new regulations
in time,” says Frans. A recruitment
drive is currently underway in the
Pretoria league to address the shortcomings in the team.
The course of Frans’s life changed
dramatically in 1983 when a knee injury signalled the end of his athletic
career. During this time a former
journalist from Pretoria News introduced him to basketball and the rest
is – as they say, history. In 1996 he
was the first ever black basketball
coach to win the national championship.
During his illustrious career
of 23 years, Frans won a
total of 35 championships
and served as the
national supporting
coach during the All
Africa Games and the
African Cup. Frans also
completed a Diploma in
Sport Management at
the then Randse Afrikaans
e Universiteit (RAU).
“My goal is to see the
NWU Vaal ranked as one
of the top 5 basketball
teams in the country. I would
also like to start a basketball academy and realise my dream of setting
up a bursary fund for talented and
deserving students,” says Frans.