Latest News Archive

Please select Category, Year, and then Month to display items
Previous Archive
04 April 2018 Photo SASCOC
Large Kovsie contingent at Commonwealth Games
Elmé de Villiers (badminton) is one of several former or current Kovsies who will be in action at the Commonwealth Games between 5 and 15 April.

The University of the Free State (UFS) will be well represented at the Commonwealth Games with 11 current or former Kovsies participating in Australia.

The Games take place from 5 to 15 April on the Gold Coast. For many of the sporting codes, this is the second biggest sporting stage after the Olympic Games.

The eight athletes are Ts’epang Sello, Juanelie Meijer and Karla Pretorius (current students) and former Kovsies Juanré Jenkinson, Elmé de Villiers, Nicole Walraven, Maryka Holtzhausen and Philip Snyman. 

In addition, three members of the management team, Neil Powell, Kate Roberts and Jan Wahl, all previously studied at the UFS. 

Holtzhausen and Powell at their third Games 
Sello will be competing in the 800m in the colours of Lesotho, her country of birth. 

Pretorius is the vice-captain of the netball team and Holtzhausen was the former captain before her serious injury in 2016. Pretorius is doing a postgraduate in Dietetics and Holtzhausen is a contract worker at Kovsiesport. She will be competing at her third Games. 
De Villiers is a member of the South African badminton team and Walraven is with the Protea hockey team. Snyman will captain the rugby team.

Meijer (long jump) and Jenkinson (shot put) will battle in the para-athletic programme.

Powell will coach the Blitzbokke who are the defending champions from 2014. It will be his second Games in charge. He also won the bronze medal as a player in 2010. 

Roberts is the manager of the triathlon team and a participant in 2006. Wahl will act as the manager of the para-athletics team.

News Archive

Little Professors enrol at UFS
2012-01-20

 
Little Professors in the making: Archie Barclay, 3 years, (left) and Khanya Nondabula, 6 years.
Photo: Phelekwa Mpono

About 65 small children have taken up residence at our Bloemfontein Campus, joining the Kovsie family.

The little ones, whose ages range from three months to six years, are the first kids to enrol at The Little Professor Crèche on the campus. The crèche, with its motto Preparing little minds for greatness, opened its doors on 9 January this year.
 
Head of the crèche, Mrs Ricka van Kerkhof, says they received a flood of applications for the 105 available places and forty more kids will be taken in during the coming weeks. Van Kerkhof says the crèche is open to everyone, but preference is given to children of UFS personnel. Currently 90% of the kids are those of university staff.
 
The well-equipped crèche has enough toys to fill up a small shop and offers extramural activities such as piano lessons, swimming, chess and pottery classes. All classes have flat-screen televisions for kids to watch educational programs. The crèche caters for six classes, infants up to Grade R. The Pre-grade R Curriculum and Foundation Phase Grade Curriculum R-3 of the Free State Department of Basic Education are followed. The language of instruction is English and parents who want to enrol their kids will pay R 1150.00 per month.
 
Van Kerkhof, who calls her job the best in the world, says The Little Professor is not a care facility. Rather it’s a place where kids are taught to concentrate on education. “We are teaching kids to be clever.”

 

We use cookies to make interactions with our websites and services easy and meaningful. To better understand how they are used, read more about the UFS cookie policy. By continuing to use this site you are giving us your consent to do this.

Accept