Volleyball: Prisons, Pipeline want to ride to continental fame

The names Yvonne Sinaida and Winnie Adhiambo hardly ring a bell in the Kenyan volleyball courts.

They are not among the famous names in this game, but even so, more will be expected of the little-known Kenya Pipeline players when two of Kenya’s representatives step out in search for a maiden Africa Volleyball Club Championship title in six years.

??Club Championship, Africa’s premier inter-club competition will serve off tomorrow (Wednesday) in Kalibia City, Tunisia.

Five-time African champions Kenya Prisons and Pipeline will join General Service Unit (GSU) and Kenya Ports Authority (KPA), the other two Kenyan clubs also in Tunisia for the? championship.

Winner of the prestigious title in both genders is guaranteed of the single African ticket to the annual FIVB World Club Championship; an equivalent of the Fifa World Club Cup. 

??Prisons are the last Kenyan club to have won this competition in 2015. For sure, the stakes will be high with the entire nation anxiously awaiting to end the jinx. Six years is a long time? indeed.?

Six years ago, Sinaida had just joined Kenya Pipeline from St. Cecilia Mautuma Secondary where she used to survive on Ugali/beans food ration.

She was still trying to a??dapt to volleyball, a new sport she learnt while in Form Three after transferring to Mautuma from Kongoni Day School. At Kongoni, Sinaida, now 24, was a key member of the school’s netball team.

“I used to play netball but would go to the volleyball field to watch my friend practice after we were done with our (Netball) training,” said Sinaida, now an integral part of the Pipeline squad that is currently in Tunisia.