Over 700 sportsmen and women are set to compete at the inaugural National Olympic Committee of Kenya (NOC-K) Beach Games set for this weekend in Kilifi County ahead of Africa and World Beach Games.
NOC-K secretary General Francis Mutuku said that they have so far registered 500 athletes who will compete in all sporting events that will be played along the Kilifi beach.
“We are good to go for Breach games on Saturday to 19th to Sunday where 17 federations are set to compete and players registration came to an end on Wednesday evening. For now, we have a very big number of athletes from all the federations and all people who will make the event a success,” said Mutuku.
He said that on Wednesday afternoon, they had already managed to register over 500 but more are expected by close of business they expect 700.
“This will be the biggest gathering of sports people in a competition. We are looking for a big show with two objectives. One is the forthcoming Africa Beach Games that will be held in June and later the World Beach games. We expect registered players to start arriving in Kilifi from Thursday morning ahead of the games and when we have the opening ceremony on Friday evening, all players and officials should be ready,” added Mutuku.
He added that practically all the playing fields and because all the games will be played, along the beaches, the preparations are ongoing and will be ready Thursday.
“We have beach soccer where several teams from Kilifi County will showcase their talents. The preliminary events will take place on Saturday where we will play at night with basketball 3×3 at 9m and all the finals should be played on Sunday before the closing ceremony that we are anticipating that we come at 2pm,” said Mutuku adding that the free-style soccer competition popularly called Pepeta started about a week ago.
Pepeta soccer, according to Mutuku, received a good response where the top three will be invited for prizes