Olympic and Upper Hill lose in Africa school games

By OSCAR PILIPILI

Kenya’s quest for glory at Airtel Rising Stars Africa Championship got off to a poor start after Upper Hill Boys and Olympic Girls High lost their opening matches.

Olympic put up a spirited performance before going down 0-1 to hosts Nigeria in a tight contest.

Olympic coach Maurice Okumu said in an email statement that the evenly contested and entertaining match played at Agege Township Stadium remained deadlocked in the opening half yesterday.

Nigeria notched the all -important goal in the 50th minute through Rachel Brown.

The script was the same for Upper Hill who were gunned down 2-3 by an enterprising Madagascar side.

All the five goals were scored in an open second half. In the other opening match Nigerian maintained the country’s perfect start after blanking the Democratic Republic of Congo 2-0.

The Airtel Rising Stars African Under-17 football tournament is an initiative of Airtel Africa designed to create a pool of talents to feed the national teams of African countries.

Upper Hill and Olympic qualified for the Lagos show by virtue of winning National Secondary Schools Championships at Kangaru School last month.

Meanwhile, Kerugoya High hockey girls’ team is plotting a major comeback in Secondary School Championships next season.

The team’s campaign to claim top honours in the championships this year failed after it landed in silver position in East African Games. Before the inter-countries games, Kerugoya had just managed bronze in the nationals.

Kerugoya is credited with winning the East African Games four times out of the six events and claimed the nationals on two occasions.

Head coach Joseph Maina said despite the fact that nine of his players are leaving this year, they look forward to a brighter future.

Maina attributed the below par performance of his team to inexperience of some of his players.

“Two of my top stars did not play for the team for the whole season due to various reasons and this forced me to use young and inexperienced players,” he said.

Maina was speaking during a prize giving ceremony where various groups including the hockey team were awarded for excelling in different disciplines.The team was given a trophy donated by Kirinyaga County Senator Daniel Karaba.

Area Governor Joseph Ndathi, who also graced the occasion, congratulated the team’s success being the only one from Aberdare region.