Little is known about volleyball in Africa but that is about to change! The Kenya Women’s volleyball team made history this year in the FIVB World Grand Prix that took place in July and August. The Malkia Strikers, which in translated means queens of volleyball, broke their 20 year jinx by winning their first games at any FIVB world competition. They beat Mexico 3-1, Algeria 3-0 and Australia 3-2 in what is a first for any African women’s team.
Kenya broke into the volleyball scene in 1987 at the All African Games held in Nairobi where they beat all odds to grab the silver medal in their maiden continental competition losing to Egypt on home ground an in front their then President Daniel Arap Moi. They however avenged this by winning the pan African edition in Egypt held in 1991 where they beat Egypt before their home crowd. The country has never looked back since then taking part in all the Major FIVB tournaments including the World Cup, World championships as well as the Olympics and quite recently the World Grand Prix.
They have however been unable to win any game to date but have come close in several occasions going down 3-2 to Costa Rica in the 2006 World Championships and 3-2 to Peru in the 2007 World Cup.
The girls overcame all odds including poor training conditions sometimes being forced to train out doors to pull a memorable stunt that had the whole nation speaking. Their enthusiasm and dedication cannot be matched. They may be technically weaker than most European, Asian and American teams but they make up for this in shear strength and determination.
Kenya also produced the top scorer in the first two rounds, Mercy Moim, who is an outside hitter. They narrowly missed the final round as they had tied with Kazakhstan in everything including set ratio.
Kenya has come of age!! Believe me, Africa is the next frontier of power volleyball that was previously shown by the Cubans! Kudos to the Malkia Strikers!
