Hamukwaya: The coach behind Benson’s success

WINDHOEK – He was confident that his athlete would win but he just couldn’t bring himself to watch the race and looked away as sprinter Johanna Benson took to the track.

He turned his head back to see a victorious Benson with her arms held high, and members of the Namibian delegation in the London Olympic Stadium jumping and screaming wildly with joy.
Paralympic coach Michael Hamukwaya said he could not watch the race because he was scared of slip-ups which could have prevented his athlete from winning the 200-metre final.
Benson nearly won the 100m race as well, but was pipped to the finish line by a French runner.
‘That’s when Fernandes (Barbara) and I knew that the gold medal of the 200m race is ours, also because Johanna kept improving her personal best (PB) time during her 200m practice sessions,’ he said.
In an interview recently, Hamukwaya told Nampa that although the other Namibian athletes – Ananias Shikongo and his guide Even Tjiviju, Martin Aloisius, Reginald Benade and Ruben Soroseb – did not return with medals, they were all worthy participants. He said all these other athletes picked up injuries during the Paralympic Games, which prevented them giving their best.
Shikongo did break his PB several times despite his injury.
The coach said all the Namibian athletes arrived in London injury free, but the stress of competing at such a high level took its toll on their bodies.
Fernandes is a Cuban coach on assignment in Namibia. Hamukwaya heaped lots of praise on the assistant coach for helping to mould the Namibian Paralympians into the elite athletes that they have become. He boasted that he has also become an accomplished coach with Fernandes’s guidance.
Hamukwaya, 35, met Benson and some of the 2012 Namibian Paralympians in 2005 when he took a national team of athletes with disabilities to Durban, South Africa, for a competition there.
‘It was a big group of 51 athletes (28 wheelchair-bound) and the situation was very challenging for only three coaches to manage, but we did it,’ he said proudly.
There they discovered 26 potential elite athletes, amongst them Benson, Shikongo and Aloisius.
To lead such a big group was an achievement for Hamukwaya, who took up coaching people with disabilities just the year before, while working as an orthopaedic technician at the Oshakati State Hospital.
He was appointed as the national coach for athletes with disabilities in 2004 after his club, Oshana Heroes’ Sports Club for PLWD, ended second out of five clubs in the 2004 National Championships for PLWD at their first try – an honour he still cherishes dearly.
As his passion for Paralympic sports grew, Hamukwaya attended an International Paralympic Committee (IPC) training seminar in Cairo, Egypt, in 2006, where he met many other coaches who motivated him to continue, and he expanded his knowledge through IPC technical and officiating courses online.
He has, in the meantime, obtained an International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) Level One coaching licence, and is currently studying sports science at the University of Namibia (Unam).
While coaching athletes with disabilities, he still diligently attends to his amputee patients and hardly has any free time for himself. But with a smile on his face, he says he feels very happy about coaching athletes with disabilities.
‘My aim is to get more people with disabilities involved in sports, because I know they can achieve greater things than they think they can,’ said Hamukwaya.
He described with passion the immense satisfaction he gets from seeing people with disabilities growing stronger through their participation in sports.
Even Benson, he said, did not have much body strength when they first started working together.

benefits

‘But through sports training her muscles developed, especially on the side of her body that is affected by cerebral palsy. Sport is good for everyone, more so for people with disabilities.’
Hamukwaya’s love for sport started in Cuba where he attended school from 1988 to 1995.
While there, he participated in boxing, athletics, baseball, volleyball, basketball, handball, karate, football and chess.
His sport skills earned him the honour of being the first black pupil to be named Sportsman of the Year at Namib High School, then known as the Deutsche Oberschule, in Swakopmund in 1996. Because of the language difference, he re-did Grade 12 in Namibia after completing the same Grade in Cuba the year before.
Unfortunately, Mike, as he is affectionately known by his athletes and friends, injured his left knee while playing basketball in 2003, and gave up competing in sports a few years later.
His first job as an orthopaedic technician at the Oshakati State Hospital exposed him more to people with disabilities, and soon the desire manifested to help them improve their lives through sport.
He then joined the Oshana Heroes’ Sports Club as coach in 2004 and introduced other sport codes such as wheelchair basketball, table tennis and wheelchair racing.
Hamukwaya and Fernandes were also instrumental in Oshana Heroes’ Club athlete Frans ‘Tupac’ Paulus’s historic journey from Oshakati to Windhoek in his hand-powered bicycle in August 2011.
To this day, Hamukwaya still coaches with no compensation whatsoever, and continues to make sacrifices for Paralympic sports, so much so that he asked for a transfer from the Oshakati State Hospital to the Windhoek Central Hospital to be closer to the 2012 Paralympic athletes in their preparation for London and beyond.

SACRIFICE

He uses his own car, sometimes borrows friends’ cars, to get to training sessions, and at times has to transport athletes to and from training. Hamukwaya said he is driven to do the good things he does because of his passion for sport, adding that athletes with disabilities have started to believe in him and he wants to help them achieve great things.
‘We work together as a family, and for almost all athletes with disabilities, sport provided them with the opportunity to travel to other countries and meet other athletes with disabilities as well as other coaches who motivate them to continue working hard,’ he said.
Hamukwaya added that many Paralympic coaches who they have met through the years were also very happy when Benson won her medals in London.
‘An Angolan coach told me that he saw my hard work through the years, and said it finally paid off,’ he said.
Hamukwaya said he is happy that he was able to raise the bar to the point that Namibian Paralympians now get significant financial rewards for their medals.
‘We spend the same amount of time on the field, and I hope that something will be put in place to reward coaches too,’ he pointed out.
Nampa has learnt that the Angolan coaches were due to receive US$20 000 (about N$165 000) and a house for bringing home a gold medal, Kenyan coaches were set to receive US$30 000 (about N$248 000) while the South African coaches each received R100 000.
Hamukwaya is pleased that the Namibian government, through the Directorate of Sport, finally came on board with more financial assistance in the year 2008 to boost the Paralympians’ attempts to qualify for London.
During that period, Benson brought home gold in the long jump, 100m and 200m from the African Champs in 2010, and bronze in 100m from the Commonwealth Games in India in 2010, and Shikongo managed to get a bronze medal in the 100m while Benade won silver in the discus competition from the World Champs in 2011.
Shikongo also won gold in 200m and bronze in 400m, while Aloisius won bronze in 400m at the All Africa Games in 2011.
Hamukwaya also assisted Benade when he won a bronze medal in discus at the 2008 Paralympic Games in Beijing, China.
Hamukwaya said the five Paralympians are now in rehabilitation for about six months, and will be in action early next year to prepare for various international competitions, with the next goal being Brazil 2016.
The Namibian Paralympic Championships will take place next year, during which Hamukwaya hopes to identify more athletes with disabilities, whom he could mould into elite Paralympians.
– Nampa

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