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26 September 2019 | Story Ruan Bruwer | Photo Supplied
Kovsies Women Cross-Country Team Marné Mentz, Vicky Oelofse, and Channah du Plessis
Marné Mentz, Ts’epang Sello, and Tyler Beling played a huge role in Kovsies' cross-country champions win.

After coming within a whisker of claiming the title in 2018, the University of the Free State’s (UFS) runners ensured that the University Sports South Africa (USSA) cross-country trophy comes to Bloemfontein in 2019.

Kovsies are the new national student cross-country champions after they (men and women combined) won the USSA Championships in Nelspruit on Saturday, 21 September. Kovsies and the University of Johannesburg (UJ) both finished with three gold medals at the same event in 2018. UJ finished with nine overall medals compared to the eight (three gold, two silver, and three silver) of the UFS, who had to settle for second place. In 2017, the UFS finished third.

The Kovsie women’s team played a huge role in carrying the team to the top of the medal table, winning four golds. They won the 4 km and 10 km women’s team competitions as well as the road relay. The top three places by the runners of a university determined the team winner.

Marné Mentz UFS Cross-Country

Marné Mentz’s gold medal in the four-kilometre race at the
USSA Cross Country Championships helped the Kovsies
win the overall title.

Marné Mentz (first), Vicky Oelofse (fifth), and Channah du Plessis (sixth) dominated the four-kilometre race. In the 10 km, Ts’epang Sello (third), Tyler Beling (sixth), and Lizandré Mulder (seventh) did enough to ensure another gold for the Free State students. Mentz, Sello, and Beling jointly took first place in the road relay.

In the 10-km race for men, Kovsies came fifth, with Victor Makhabesela the best performer (finishing ninth). Pakiso Mthembu, one of the contenders for the medal who won the silver medal at the National Cross Country Championships two weeks before, had to withdraw after 7 km in the race due to an injury.

News Archive

I-DENT-I-TIES to shine at the Free State Arts Festival
2016-07-08

Description: I-DENT-I-TIES Tags: I-DENT-I-TIES

Erwin Maas with members of the student cast from the
Qwaqwa Campus. They are, from left: Mpho Xaba,
Lebohang Molefe and Tankiso Mofokeng.

Imagine this: A student cast from a rural campus; Production team consisting of a New York-based Dutch director, a South African screen and stage legend, a The Hague/Vienna-based Dutch theatre designer, and a Vienna-based Serbian performance-craft-artist and designer.

This sounds like a far-fetched flight of the imagination. But it is real and it is called ‘I-DENT-I-TIES’, a large-scale interdisciplinary performance project with international theatre professionals and students from the University of the Free State’s (UFS) Qwaqwa Campus.

According to the  director of the project, Erwin Maas, the production explores the ‘dents’ and ‘ties’ of both individual and communal identification and distinctiveness and does this through the famous Basotho story of ‘Moshanyana Sankatana’ as a point of departure.

“We explore questions like ‘what are dents in our society as well as in ourselves’, ‘what ties me to who I really am and who I want to be’, ‘what does it mean to be me’, ‘what does it mean to be South African’,” said Maas, who has been working on this project since last year.

The production also celebrates personal, communal, and universal narratives and identities through song, dance, story-telling, and music. It explores the past, the present, and the future.

“This production will certainly reveal an extraordinary journey into what makes us unique and binds us together,” he added during the rehearsals that started in May at the Qwaqwa Campus.

Maas has teamed up with a well-known South African film and stage legend, Jerry Mofokeng, as consultant. Mofokeng, who introduced Maas to the ‘Sankatana’ story, has featured on a number of critically-acclaimed films that include ‘Cry, The Beloved Country’ as well as the Academy Award-winning ‘Tsotsi’. Maas has also worked with the Hague/Vienna-based Dutch designer Nico de Rooij and Djana Covic, a Vienna-based Serbian designer.

The production is a partnership between the UFS Student Affairs, Vrystaat Arts Festival, the Programme for Innovation in Artform Development, and the Kingdom of the Netherlands in South Africa. It will premiere at the Free State Arts Festival, held in Bloemfontein from 11 to 16 July 2016. This will be followed by a performance at the Qwaqwa Campus on 19 July 2016.

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