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| The team comprised of six students, three boys and three girls who were accompanied by two coaches, Billy Nyawalo and Wheatherly Schwaab(visiting from the USA, and volunteering her services to the Safari Junior Tennis Camp.
We left Nairobi on Tuesday 11th August at night to arrive on Wednesday 12th when the matches were meant to start. The trip with horizon luxury bus was really appreciated by the students who all wished we could use it again. On arrival we quickly went to the house freshened up and immediately left for the venue of the tournament, as we had already started receiving panick calls from the organizers who kept asking for the trophies that we’d carried. We arrived at the venue (Shanzu Teachers College) just in time for the opening ceremony where there was a march by all participants, students and officials follwed by speeches from the various guests, including Mombasa Municpal Council Mayor, PS ministry of Youth and Sport amongst others. Immediately after, the games were officially opened and they were underway.
Since Shanzu Teachers College doesn’t have tennis courts, all players had to be transported to the new venue (Mvita Sports Club) right in the middle of town towards fort Jesus. With this movement and confusion the tennis pat of the games started at about midday. All teachers had to register their students before the matches could commence. From then on things ran pretty smoothly with the Malezi group having a pretty easy first round.
The matches were played in a round robin style of one set only with advantage. Therefore the preliminaries took quite a while. The Lunch for the fist two days consisted mainly of bread, fruit and drinks with a lot of water, as matches were finishing quite fast and we needed to be present at all times. We finished the first day at about 5.00pm where everyone went back to the hostels and we went back to our house. In the evening I called Dr. Ben Ochieng who was kind enough to have offered to host the girls at his place for the duration. He came to pick them up at about 7.30pm. We thank him and his wife for taking good care of the team.
After dinner had a chat with the boys on the games and we went to sleep a bit later on.
Woke up at 6.00am the next morning to had breakfast and it was out to businessafter the girls joined us. We arrived at the club at about 8.15am and had our warm-ups. The day went on smoothly and we went back home at about the same time. I was called to a teachers meeting in the evening by Mr. Mbuthia saying it was critical, only to discover that they were strategizing on how the province was going to win the competition….a meeting I considered utterly unnecessary for us as we were determined to win for the 6th year running, and we were ready for it.
The semifinals on Saturday was a bit more interesting with better matches being played and a near shocker was observed when Nairobi girls doubles (Maria and Melissa) almost lost to Western Province simply because of lack of concentration and too many unforced errors. Luckily they came back in and took the match. Obviously, Malezi missed the usual defending champions, Terry Odera and Sakina Nshimirimana, who were away in the USA training and playing tournaments.
The boys doubles went through without much resistance, the other teams were simply no match for Amadi Kagoma and and Richard Ooko.
The boys singles got interesting when Malezi's Yasin Shabani metWestern Province's Klaus Teller in the semis, in what would have been a quick match had Yasin not injured his hand. It took only two sets though as Klaus failed to capitalize on the situation. The finals was a different story all together, Yasin played the first three games of the match then simply switched off, he didn’t even bother to look for a point the rest of the game, much to the disappointment of both the coaches and the other spectators watching. He made his opponent look much better than he was.
The girls singles was pretty easy for Aziza Butoyi, who sailed through without losing a single set, and in some matches, she gave away minimal points, very impressive performance by her.
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William Nyawalo, PTR Certified Professional |
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