Namibia’s senior national netball team, the Desert Jewels, outclassed Zambia 53-34 during their second match of the DebMarine Namibia Pent Series here on Tuesday.

The third edition of the senior international netball tournament hosted by Netball Namibia started at the Israel Patrick Iyambo Police College in Windhoek on Monday.

Namibia, who collected points in their opening match of the championship against Kenya who only arrived in Namibia on the first day of the competition, brought their A game to beat Zambia, who lost their first match at the tournament to Uganda on Monday.

Namibia, who led every quarter of the match, had to dig deeper in the first quarter as Zambia started the game like a house on fire, taking the lead in the opening five minutes of the match.

Despite lagging behind in the opening minutes of the game, Namibia took a five-point lead after 15 minutes of action at the end of the first quarter.

The score was 13-08 in Namibia’s favour.

In the second quarter, the Desert Jewels piled more pressure on their opponents, increasing the tempo of the game to end that quarter with a 28-14 score line.

Zambia only scored six points compared to 16 points for Namibia.

The third quarter saw Zambia picking up their game to score 11 points, but Team Namibia was on cruise mode, adding 14 more points to end that quarter 42-25.

The last quarter of the match saw a number of debutants for Namibia, which was also their lowest point scoring quarter of the match with 11 points, while Zambia who found the going tough only managed to score nine points.

The final score was 53-34 in favour of the home team.

In an interview with the media, team Namibia’s head coach Julene Meyer said she was happy with her team’s performance, but they still have a long way to go.

“Our third and fourth quarter saw us making a number of changes. I was really impressed with the way the young players handled themselves despite some of them making their first appearance for the team,” said Meyer, who added that going forward, team Namibia will be firing on all cylinders as there are tough opponents ahead.

Day three of the competition will see Namibia taking on Malawi at 14h00, while Uganda and Zimbabwe will play the opening match at 12h00 and the last match will be played by Kenya and Zambia at 16h00.

The tournament is sanctioned by the International Netball Federation and will count as a ranking event for participating countries.

Source: The Namibian Press Agency