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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

Three more Kovsie staff members involved in Olympic Games
2012-05-30

 

Dr Derik Coetzee
Photo: Supplied
30 May 2012

The South African men’s hockey team will practice on our Bloemfontein Campus from 28 May to 8 June 2012, and the team count on the assistance of three Kovsies to prepare them for the Olympic Games taking place in London later this year.  

Dr Derik Coetzee, senior lecturer in the Department of Exercise and Sport Science and Head of our High Performance Centre, has been appointed conditioning coach of the team. He will be assisted by Colleen Jones and Riaan Schoeman, also from this department.

The UFS team and Mr Gregg Clark, the team’s coach, will work out a periodisation programme for the team, which will continue until the hockey finals at the Olympic Games. The programme includes the correct exercises, volume, intensity and number of exercise sessions per week.

This is not the first time that Dr Coetzee has assisted sports teams to prepare for important events. In 2007, he was the conditioning coach of the Springbok rugby team that won the World Cup in France. He was also the conditioning coach of the under-21 Springbok team in 2002 that won the Junior World Cup Tournament. 

Dr Coetzee says it is a challenge to ensure that the team performs well at the Olympic Games. “The joy on the faces of the coach and players when they qualified in Japan cannot be described because many people thought they would not qualify.”

With the addition of Dr Coetzee, Ms Jones and Mr Schoeman, a total of six staff members from the UFS will be involved with the Olympic Games and the Paralympic Games. The other three are:

  • Dr Louis Holtzhausen, Head of the university’s Department of Sports and Exercise Medicine, has been selected as team doctor for the more than 300 athletes that will represent South Africa at this year’s Olympic Games (in London).
  • Ms Ebeth Grobbelaar, Assistant Director of the South African Testing Laboratory for Prohibited Substances at the UFS, was invited to be involved in the Drugs Control Centre in the unit against prohibited substances which will test sportsmen and -women during the games.
  • Ms Hetsie Veitch, Head of the Unit for Students with Disabilities, has been invited to be a member of the Classification Panel at the final USA Paralympic athletics trials.

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