The Final Tournament

The District sports day didn't turn out the way that I thought it would. We had a good team, but didn't have any time to prepare. The zonal office was unorganized and the money that was paid to take care of the sports teams at district wasn't there! Just one more bit of corruption in the Kenyan government. So the players in all the sports had walked to Mbita; some from as far as 35 kilometers away, but the education office didn't have any money to feed them until the teachers protested long enough and finally at 3:30 in the afternoon they had them walk back to town for some porridge. That left us only about 30 minutes to prepare when they returned around 5:30 pm. The lack of preparation showed the following day when our girls soccer team was thoroughly outplayed in a 2-1 loss. It is the first time this year that any team had scored even a goal against us and our first loss in 11 matches that we had played at different levels. None of the other Mbita Division teams fared very well either.

After losing, I was left with sufficient time to help select the best girls players from all 5 divisions. Today was a preparation day and tomorrow we will be leaving for Migori (about 3 hours away) for the Provencial Tournament. All 23 districts in the Province will be represeneted there in the 4 day tournament. Last year our girls lost in the championship game. This year we hope we will be good enough to win it all. We have 5 girls returning from last year's team and several other good ones that we have added. The goalkeeper and one of our defenders are from CGA. I have enjoyed the first day of coaching them and am looking forward to a fun week full of sports!