Beach volleyball team lands tough Olympics pool as Mulinge drops two

National women’s beach volleyball team on Monday landed a tough pool against world-beaters Brazil, United States of America and Latvia ahead of the Tokyo Olympic Games.

Kenya’s duo of Gaudencia Makokha and Brackcides Agala were drawn in pool ‘D’ alongside Ana Patricia/Rebecca Cavalcante (Brazil), Kelly Clases/Sarah Sponcil (USA) and Anastasija Kravcenoka/ Tina Graudina (Latvia).

24 beach volleyball teams will compete during the Summer Games slated for July 23 to August 8 in Tokyo, Japan.

Kenya will represent Africa in the women’s category, while Morocco will play in the men’s version after both emerged winners of the CAVB Continental Cup cum Olympics qualifiers held  in Agadir, Morocco  last month.

Morocco landed in pool ‘E’ which has Poland, Brazil and Chile.

“It’s a tricky group but I believe there is no easy match at a big stage like Olympics. The first target was to qualify and we did it for the first time in the Kenya’s history, but now we must announce our arrival by performing well in Japan,” said head coach Sammy Mulinge after the draws.

Meanwhile, Mulinge Monday dropped the pair of Yvonne Wavinya and Phosicah Kasisi from the squad currently in a residential training at the Pride Inn Flamingo Hotel, Mombasa.

That means Kenya will take only one pair of Makokha and Agala to the multi-sport event.

“We’re only allowed to travel with one pair in Japan and it was really difficult to drop the two players because we won the ticket together in Morocco. We’re trying to talk to them to accept the decision because for sure they were certain they would to Japan. It’s every player’s dream to play in Olympics,” he told Citizen Digital.

The quartet of Agala, Makokha, Kasisi and Wavinya defied the odds to win the single ticket reserved for Africa after spanking the pairs of Touch Nnoruga and Francisca Albertina, as well as Francisca Ikhiede and Amarachi Nwachukwu from Nigeria 2-1 (17-21, 21-18,15-10) and 2-0 (21-17, 21-10) respectively during the qualifiers.