The Kenya Deaf men and women’s basketball teams are the last to arrive in the country from the recently concluded 24th Summer Deaflympics 2021 games in Brazil. Both teams were on Friday May 20, 2022 hosted to a celebratory breakfast at Pride Inn Azure Hotel in Westlands Nairobi.
Men’s team captain Calvin Musalia, said of the Deaflympics outing “we did our best, I can say we improved despite having new blood in the team. We need to put up new structures to strengthen the team.” The men’s side coached by Geoffrey Mwaniki exited the tournament in the preliminary stage after losing all group A matches against USA, Poland, Israel and Argentina.
Mary Chepkoi, head coach women’s team acknowledged invaluable experienced gained in Brazil terming it as “ a great privilege to take part in the Games. We managed to achieve our goal which was to improve our rankings in Turkey in 2017. Our worst game was a 114 -21 loss against Lithuania and our best was against Brazil which we won 98-11.” The women’s team currently ranked 8th in the world also played Lithuania in group A before being bundled out in the quarterfinals.
Kenya Sports Federation of the Deaf President Peter Kalae who arrived with the teams
noted the importance of Deaf teams building their capacity saying they should start training with their hearing counterparts to improve their skills. Kalae hinted that two basketballers might be headed abroad to play in professional championships if all goes well.