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By Kimathi Kamau NAIROBI (Xinhua)
-- Kenyan men’s sitting
volleyball team is complaining the lack of official
support ahead of the Africa Para-Sitting Volleyball
Championships to be held in Rwanda from Sept. 10 to 14.
The
continental event will also serve as qualifiers for the
2018 Sitting Volleyball World Cup to be held at The
Hague, Netherlands next July.
The
President of the Kenya Sitting Volleyball Federation,
Polycarp Mboya, has called on the country’s Ministry of
Sports, Culture and the Arts to follow through on its
verbal commitment to support the teams.
“We are
supposed to be in residential training, but we are not
because we don’t have the funds. Sitting volleyball is
played by athletes with a physical disability and
encompasses all age groups and both genders.
“Therefore,
movement itself from their homes to the training centre
at Kasarani is a big challenge. In all honesty, if a
team deserves to be in residential training, we know
where the priority should go,” Mboya lamented.
Kenya missed
out on the opportunity to host the regional
championships in May after the State failed to avail
280,000 U.S. dollars needed to host the event with
Rwanda stepping in to stage the qualifiers.
“This should
be the time of fine-tuning training, implementation of
offensive systems and mentally preparing for the
tournament but instead, we are dealing with players
failing to make to camp because they lack fare. That is
sad,” Kenya head Coach; Joseph Juma, claimed.
Juma who has
18 players available will trim the squad to the 12
required for the Kigali trip where Kenya will compete to
nail one of the two available slots for the Netherlands
World Cup as the squad trains more in anticipation.
The team is
scheduled to leave the country for Rwanda on Sept. 8.
Egypt who are ranked third in the world are the only
African nation that has already qualified for the global
showpiece. |
