PARIS, France, Jul 29 – The national women’s volleyball team “Malkia Strikers” opened her Paris 2024 Olympic Games with a straight set loss to top ranked side Brazil on Monday afternoon.
An improved Kenya served the first set on a high to see them open the scoring and matching Brazil’s performance by receiving the balls well and attacking led by the powerful Pamela Adhiambo.
However, Brazil increased the tempo of the game to force Kenya’s head coach Japheth Munala call for the first technical time out after trailing 7-13 before the second time out where Brazil was leading 19-10.
Kenya added four more points to end the first set 14-25, dominated by Brazil who registered 15 attacks over Malkia’s 9 and managed 4 blocks against the Japheth Munala girls.
In the second set, Malkia Strikers once again started on a scoring note, leading by two points with outside hitter players Leonida Kasaya notching three points as Pamela Adhiambo and Veronica Adhiambo recorded two points each to see the African champions trail 13-7 in the first technical time out.
By the time the game was headed to the second time out, Brazil was leading 22-10 before eventually wrapping the set with a 25-13 victory where Kenya improved on the blocks; recording two great stops over her opponent’s 6. Pamela was Kenya’s top scorer with seven points followed by Kasaya’s 4 while Veronica scored 3.
The African Queens recorded 12-25 in the last set to lose the first game by straight sets, but head coach Munala said his players showed an improved performance.
“Our performance wasn’t that bad. In the first and second set, we gave our all, we attacked, but sadly we could not win a set, but we lost it completely in the third, I think after the first two sets the girls gave up and at some point, thought they would never recover the two-set deficit.” Munala said after the game.
“Our problem has always been reception, but today, I am glad our girls did much better in that area than I expected, they have really tried. The other problem was also hitting the ball at the net, we were hitting really hard but failed to ground the ball on sundry occasions. We tried and tried, but the Brazilians blocked our shots,” Munala added.
Munala nevertheless believes it’s still early days with room for improvements.
“We still have work to do. Poland is the toughest team of them all in my opinion. We will give it our all, though. We will tweak some positions then see how it goes in our second match.”
Kenya next plays Poland, who are ranked third in the world on July 31 before wrapping Pool B with a clash against Japan.