Starlets feted after stellar Cecafa showing

The Kenya National Women’s team, Harambee Starlets, returned home to a colorful welcome party on Wednesday at a Nairobi Hotel where they were feted after a successful tournament outing at the inaugural Cecafa Women Championships held in Uganda.

A magnificent winning streak of four matches and 22 goals scored along their way saw the Starlets earn the favourites tag but were felled 2-1 by Tanzania’s Kilimanjaro Queens in a hotly contested final played at the FUFA Njeru Technical Centre, Jinja.

The event was presided over by Sports Cabinet Secretary, Hassan Wario, with Football Kenya Federation (FKF) President, Nick Mwendwa, also part of the contingent. Together, the two leaders revealed the plans that are underway to ensure the gains already made in the sport are built upon.

“I would like to thank the Sports Ministry for the support they gave our federation throughout the tournament. The tournament has been a success and I can state that in conjunction with the ministry we are already planning for a massive training of coaches in Kenya starting next year.

“The team has shown a strong belief in themselves and are aiming to be the next champions after suffering this finals setback. Plans are underway to have Kenya host the next Cecafa tournament and further details on this will be communicated,” Mwendwa stated.

He urged the Starlets to start focusing on the upcoming Africa Women Cup of Nations (AWCON) saying that teams like Nigeria will pose an even stronger challenge.

Also present at the event was Gordon Oluoch, the Chief Executive Officer of Sports in Kenya who assured the football team that they will work hand in hand with the sports federation to come up with an age group sports where they can nurture talents at different levels.

“The Federation should not only concentrate at the National levels but also put more efforts at the lower levels to identify young talented footballers and nurture them.

“A simple statistic was conducted in the Harambee Starlets’ team and it was found that most of the team members graduated from the football academy,” Oluoch said.

He also urged the players to engage in sports at a younger age and should form cooperatives for assisting each other whenever they are faced by challenges.

“The players should also be patriotic to their country especially when participating in international tournaments where they can be tempted to join other countries due to better conditions and payment,” he added

Harambee Starlets Head Coach, David Ouma, expressed his confidence of doing well in the upcoming Africa Women Cup of Nations to be held in Yaounde, Cameroon from November 19th to December 3rd 2016 where Starlets will represent East Africa region.

“Having being grouped against Ghana Mali and the champs Nigeria, for me as a coach I can say every team has equal chances and in terms of the players in my team, they have learning mentality. If you look at the sequence of the COTIF tournament and Cecafa you could see we started strongly.

“For me, this is the situation where I will work in terms of their mental capabilities. Definitely, they will be in better shape,” Ouma asserted.

Speaking to Citizen Digital, Starlets first Captain, Ann Oluoch, called upon the government to offer more support to the team to ensure better results from the team during the forthcoming AWCON tournament.

The ladies have been given few days to rest before resuming to Camp to prepare for the African championships and have been promised a few friendly matches before setting off to Cameroon.

-Additional Report by Kelvin Nyapera