United States of America women’s volleyball team coach Karch Kiraly has showered Kenya for it’s continuous remarkable improvement they have posted as they won against the East Africans 3-0(25-14,25-20,25-14) during the FIVB World Cup on Saturday morning at the Hamamatsu Arena in Japan.
Kiraly said :”I want to congratulate Team Kenya. We studied them on video and saw them today and we see them playing the best volleyball we’ve ever seen them. Every year, they are getting better and better and that’s a real credit to their learning and to their coaches. We also have great admiration for the spirit that they play with, their competitive spirit their joy of playing volleyball.”
Kenya would now play Netherlands on Sunday morning before they take on World champions Serbia on Monday.
The East Africans played Netherlands during the last month Intercontinental Olympic Qualifiers in Italy but fell short.
The Sunday morning encounter will be Netherlands to lose if the FIVB ranking is anything to go by where they are placed in the seventh position while Kenya are ranked in the 20th position.
Commenting on the match against USA Kenya coach Paul Bitok who recently guided the team to retain the All African Games title in Morocco said : "First, I would like to congratulate USA for winning the match. I think we came in knowing we are playing a big team and some of my players were a bit afraid because they are a big team and we respect them. We lost a lot of points at the beginning of the match because of this. The players were panicking, but we came back in the second set and stabilised. I think we improved on reception. This is what we were looking for in this tournament, to have good reception.”
He continued: “Today, I really appreciated my players for doing good. Maybe one or two players still have this problem but I think we will learn from this match so we can correct it and improve. Maybe USA were more stable and didn’t have any pressure. I also used the match to bring in two young players (Sharon Kiprono and Lorine Kaei) and they came in at a good level and I hope that these players will help me in the future."
Kenya captain Mercy Moim: "My team played so well. At a point, we lost concentration. In the first set, we played bad. Our reception was good but we lost in the attacks, but in the second set we had better results. I think they are a very good team and they gave us good motivation."
Fast-rising Sharon Chepchumba and Noel Murambi emerged Kenya’s top scorer with 11 and six points respectively.
Africans other representatives Cameroon succumbed to Russia 3-0( 25-14,25-15,25-10) and will now line up against China on Sunday morning in Yokohama City.
