Senegal's talent search targets Youth Olympic Games Dakar 2026 Baseball5 tournament

Senegal has started its preparations for participating in the Baseball5 tournament of the Youth Olympic Games Dakar 2026 by launching a new initiative to spot talent in schools.

"We are targeting boys and girls in the U-15 age bracket," said Papa Amadou Mbodj, the head of the National Promotion Committee (CNP) for Baseball and Softball. "We are willing to form teams and start school competitions. The ultimate goal is to have Senegal participate in the Baseball5 tournament of the Dakar 2026 Youth Olympics (YOG)."

The National Superior Institute of People's Education and Sports (INSEPS) and the National Centre for People's Education and Sports (CNEPS) in Thies, the third largest city in the country, 70 kilometres east of Dakar, will take care of the technical development of the project, The National School Sports Federation is also involved.

In 2021, the Senegal Baseball and Softball Association launched a five-year Baseball5 development plan to make the most of the Senegalese people familiar with the five-on-five version of baseball/softball within the 2026 Youth Olympic Games. The core of the initiative was the 50,000 Baseball5 Members campaign.

In September 2023, Baseball5 featured in the Dakar en Jeux festival, a series of cultural and sporting events that will occur every year until the YOG in 2026.

As part of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed with the WBSC and the Association of National Olympic Committees of Africa (ANOCA) in 2021, the Olympafrica Foundation organized in February 2024 seven Baseball5 tournaments involving 1,134 children - 628 boys and 506 girls The tournament in Somone, Senegal, included 100 boys and 60 girls.