They gave me a good deal, but I chose home with my family

Volleyball icon Paul Bitok. [File, Standard]

Watching the fit girls return to serve, battling it out on the volley pitch for the African Championships prize a few weeks ago was a mind wracking experience. They had what it takes. He knew that. But a lot was riding on this. It was his first game with the team after coming back home to Kenya from Rwanda where he had been for the last 10 years. This game was going to set the tone for him. He needed the win.

The pressure wasn’t anything he wasn’t used to. As a coach in Rwanda for the national team, all the six foreign coaches had a scorecard that determined if they kept their contract. And the standards were high. So much so that all of them quit within the first two years. So this muscle clenching and cracking of knuckles from tension was the name of the game for him. But when the final whistle was blown and the Kenyan team had won, he sighed in gratitude. They had made it. The gold was in the bag. The queens were back on top. And he was right there with them.