Sitting volleyball team confident of bagging Olympic slot in Rwanda

The Kenya women sitting volleyball head coach, Vitalis Ojuku, is confident that his team will automatically book tickets to represent Africa at the 2020 Paralympics in Tokyo, Japan, having confirmed their participation for the qualifiers in Kigali, Rwanda.

Ojuku who has been leading the team since 2009 says they’ll leave nothing to chance.

This year’s Para-volley Africa Sitting Volleyball qualifiers for  men and women is due in September with the women’s  slated for September 15-17, while their male counterparts will be tussling it out on September 19-22 in Kigali.

Countries that will be represented in the qualifiers include host Rwanda, Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Egypt and Morocco.

“We are the team that every country in Africa is looking at because we are so competitive and we pose a great threat to them, we are not going to take chances when we arrive in Rwanda. Everybody is ready for the qualifiers and we have to be number one.

“This is because we have had incidents where the official say two teams will acquire tickets for Olympics but when many countries take part in the qualifiers they change the number of teams who get automatic tickets so we are going for the first position to be safe,” said Ojuku.

The KPVF has also raised concern regarding the team preparation ahead of the qualifiers as the squad lacks proper training facilities at the Kasarani Indoor Arena- their training venue

Speaking to Citizen Digital, KVPF chairman Polycarp Mboya raised concerns with the team’s state of affairs.

“It is very unfortunate that all these players have volunteered, nobody has been sponsored, I am hosting players in the national team. It would be appropriate if the players get to camp so that the players can be well monitored by the technical team,’’ he noted.