The final football matches that were to determine the eight teams that would participate in the National Talanta Hela football tournament have been suspended due to heavy rainfall being experienced in Nyeri town.
Tournament referee Douglas Ngugi had to suspend a match after five minutes into the second half after the Nyeri Complex Primary School soaked into a sludge. The Busia Girls team had played to a 1-1 draw against the Homabay football team amidst struggling to keep their eyes on the ball and at the same time maintain their balance due to the slippery ground.
There was no pitch to transfer the games with Ruring’u stadium not anywhere near completion nearly eight years after it was started.
Speaking after the suspension of the match, the Talent Development Officer at the Kenya Academy of Sports, James Theuri told KNA; “As the technical committee, we have decided to stop the matches due to the heavy rain. We are going to put our heads together and decide how to proceed from here but we shall communicate the final decision.”
Earlier on Kirinyaga County Boys took third place in the playoff after scoring two goals against Nakuru Boys. In the girls’ category, Uasin Gishu beat Machakos 3-2 in the week-long regional sporting that attracted 21 teams.
The talent search showpiece was expected to end today with Sports CS Ababu Namwamba expected to grace the closing ceremony.
The tournament which kicked off on Wednesday last week had brought in a total of 20 teams (both girls and boys) from 18 counties.
On Tuesday Kenya Academy of Sports (KAS) Chief Executive Officer Doreen Odhiambo termed the entire event a success and said they are hoping the initiative will help identify and nurture talents to represent the country on the global scene.
She said the main objective of setting up the academy was to grow talents from the grassroots and develop them to help teams become ambassadors for the country on the international football scene.
“The main objective of setting up the Kenya Academy of Sports is to ensure that we have different sports representing us on the international scene. We’ve been depending on athletes like volleyball and rugby but we believe that we have so many talents in different sports whose talents need to be nurtured and that’s why the Kenya Academy of Sports was started,” she told KNA.
Ms Adhiambo said the academy is working with a special technical team that often visits schools during sporting events to identify specific sporting talents among the learners.
By August this year, KACS had identified at least 2,000 disciplines from football to basketball who are being trained and equipped with specialized training to come up with a formidable sporting team for the future.
“Our work is identifying and developing talents and capacity building sport technical personnel and ensuring they are given the right training to enable them to develop their talent well. We want to ensure Kenya Academy of Sports will be developing the junior team for the country. We are the ones who are supposed to get the team and feed it to the Federation (Football Kenya Federation),” she added.
By Wangari Mwangi
