National women’s volleyball head coach Paul Bitok is positive that Kenya will win at least two preliminary matches at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
Kenya’s Malkia Strikers have been drawn in Pool ‘A’ alongside Olympic defending and world champions Serbia, Dominican Republic, South Korea, Brazil and hosts Japan.
“We have our task cut out. Our pool is a tough one, maybe hard as a rock. But at the level we are in right now, we must bring down at least one team in the group stages,” said Bitok, who was last week feted as Kenya’s coach of the year during the SOYA Awards.
However, the tactician says with the kind of training regime that’s being put in place for the Olympic returnees, winning two encounters will not be a far-fetched dream.
The second group comprises of China, USA, Russia, Argentina, Turkey and Italy. The top four teams in each pool will qualify for the quarter-finals.
Meanwhile, the coach intimated that Malkia Strikers will commence training in April in Nairobi before moving base to Turkey for two months — May and June — catered for by the Ministry of Sports and the Kenya Volleyball Federation.
The outfit will then move to Karume City in July for 21 days to acclimatise to the Japanese climate ahead of the quadrennial sports extravaganza as planned by National Olympic Committee of Kenya (Nock).
