Friday, July 19, 2013

Malindi High at the National Championships in Nakuru

Well, it's the same old story!  As good as it is for us to have the national exposure, we were crushed at the Nationals.  The first game against (granted Perennial National Favourites) Kakamega resulted in an almost incredible 60 - 0 score line, that's almost a try a minute pace...

The boys had been buoyed by their two wins last year against Alliance and Shimo la Tewa (I think in the shield) and had aimed to have at least two wins in the group to try to advance to the quarters. but this was not to be this year. That game took all of the steam out of the boys and the rest of the tournament proved tough to motivate them.  There has been a lot of talk about Kakamega fielding older players than regulations, I don't know if that is the case, but I hope someone looks into it.  In the mean time, it's just fuel for us to work harder! This again is the main thing we need to work on with them from now on, mental toughness. Other scores were a close 15-10 loss to Moi, 29-0 loss to Alliance and then a 7 - 0 loss to Kibiricho in the bowl.  St Georges beat St Mary's Yala and made it to the Quarters.  Good on them!  I suppose our goal next year has to be to beat Georges!!!

Regional (Provincial) Success for Malindi H again...

I Haven't updated this post in a while poleni!  So just wanted to document the continued success of the Malindi High team!  Congratulations to the Boys once again, they were not (regional) provincial champions but lost in the final (to guess who? St Georges) which gave them the right to represent the coast in the National Championships in Nakuru.  Perhaps I had been to hard on the boys.  It turned out that St Georges was in deed the best team on the Coast, and although I don't like that we were second best, I do feel that Georges was over aged and that they had an unfair advantage.  They have a club team at their disposal (Shephards) which allows their boys to travel and have access to higher level competition.  We're working on getting that for our boys here.  We're lucky only that we were not on their side of the table!

At any rate, as promised, after the counties, I switched my focus to the younger boys, only acting as a distant advisor to Waweru prior to the Regionals. I have also had long discussions with Waweru about discipline and the need to make sure we focus on having our players develop strong character and moral values rather than sacrifice to win, and I am now satisfied that he is on board with that.  I think by withdrawing myself, I sent a clear message to the boys which they understood.

I'm sure it will happen again, if I've learnt one thing with this project is that you have to be patient, deliberate, loyal and just be determined and eventually success comes. Actually we've had a lot.  Our long term goal is to WIN THE NATIONALS in ten years and to have three players representing Kenya within that timeframe.