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26 October 2018 Photo Gallo Images
Kovsie Netball star selected to the national team
Kovsie Netball Team player Khanyisa Chawana has been selected to the National Spar Proteas Netball team.
Kovsie Netball Team centre and wing attack player Khanyisa Chawane’s glorious netball career has taken to greater heights after her recent selection into the national netball team.

The 22 year-old student final year Bachelor of Science (Geography and Agrometeorology) student hailed her selection as a new challenge in her sporting career.

Chawana has this week been in  Australia for the Fast 5 netball series where they will be playing against Jamaica, Malawi, Australia, New Zealand and England on this coming Sunday and Monday.
A Fast 5 is a quick-paced netball game where contesting nations will select five players per side.

Testing her prowess with the best

Chawana has so far been capped three times in the Spar Proteas national netball team; those were for the Quad Series matches which the South African Spar Proteas played against Australia, New Zealand and England. The games were held in Australia last month.

“I was nervous at first, but I wanted to go out there and wanted to prove myself that I worked hard to be here,” she said adding that their opponents were playing a different game with speed and high intensity.

“After those games, I felt like I needed to prepare myself more so that I could handle the intensity as I was playing with ladies who have been capped many times and were more experienced,” she said.

Kovsie netball coach “inspired me to be the best”

Asked who has been a source of her inspiration in her netball career, Chawana spared no moment in attributing her rise to Kovsie Netball Team coach Burta De Kock.

She explained that from her late high school days when she was playing at provincial games in Limpopo, De Kock scouted her abilities and has been keeping an eye on her since then.

“When I was doing Grade 12, she approached me and said, ‘One day you will play in the National Netball Team.”

“When I first got the news of my selection, I exclaimed and said; Wow! Words do really come true, my coach Burta saw in me what I could not see and she prepared me for the best.”

She described her coach as a kind of a manager who individually nurtures the abilities of each and every single player for the best, “I am so grateful to her.”

Chawana blew off family blows

Last year, Chawana was dealt a devastating blow when her family home in Bushbuckridge, Mpumalanga was razed to the ground by fire, thereby losing all her possessions. Her father, Russel, also had to spend three weeks in the intensive care unit of a local hospital for smoke inhalation treatment.

“Having gone through all this, but for me, nothing picks me up more than a prayer. I felt that all this might have happened for a reason and it always aspired that something better will come up,” she said.

During the Varsity Cup National Netball Tournament finals played which the Kovsie Netball Team played against the University of Pretoria here, Chawana came out as the best player in the Premier League, National Championship and the Varsity Netball in the same year.

News Archive

Bloemfontein Campus hosts annual HELTASA conference
2014-12-09

 

From the left are: Prof Francois Strydom, Director: Academic - Centre for Teaching and Learning, UFS; Dr Lis Lange, Vice-Rector: Academic, UFS; and Prof George Kuh, Adjunct Research Professor of Education Policy at the University of Illinois.

This year, the privilege to host the annual Higher Education Learning and Teaching Association of Southern Africa (HELTASA) conference was afforded to our university. The event took place on the Bloemfontein Campus from 18 – 21 November 2014, attracting keynote speakers and members from across the world.

HELTASA is a professional association mainly for educators and significant role players in higher education institutions. With its inception in the early 2000s, it has grown to become the premier organisation for teaching and learning in Southern Africa, Dr Amanda Hlengwa, President of HELTASA, pointed out.

A central concern of this body is issues around success within the tertiary sector. The theme of this year, ‘Accessing success: using evidence for change’ served to focus members’ attention on what works and what does not work – as derived from researched evidence.

In a message from Prof Jonathan Jansen, Vice-Chancellor and Rector of the University of the Free State (UFS), he stressed that the task as university teachers “is not simply cognitive gains that ensure graduation success but also intellectual gains that ensure success in life during and after university studies.”

The conference was led by internationally-acclaimed keynote speakers, namely Prof George Kuh, Prof William Grabe and Prof Fredricka Stoller, as well as our own A1 NRF-rated Prof Malanie Walker.

Prof Kuh is Adjunct Research Professor of Education Policy at the University of Illinois and Chancellor’s Professor of Higher Education Emeritus at Indiana University. In his keynote address, Prof Kuh offered valuable lessons from the field to promote student success.

Profs Grabe and Stoller collectively presented the second keynote address that explored how to set up students for success through strategic-reader training. Prof Grabe is Regents’ Professor of Applied Linguistics and Vice President for Research at Northern Arizona University. Prof Stoller is a Professor of English at Northern Arizona University, where she teaches in the MA-TESL and PhD in Applied Linguistics programmes.

Prof Walker is a Senior Research Professor at the UFS Centre for Research on Higher Education and Development (CRHED). She is also currently Director of Research Training and a senior researcher in the EU-funded Marie Curie EDUWEL project. In her keynote address, Prof Walker looked at well-being and agency in higher education.

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