Kenya push for more female involvement in local basketball

The Kenya Basketball Women Commission (KBWC) has resolved to ensure more females are employed in the sport in the East African country.

Nelly Odera is the chairman of KBWC and says 20 women have begun online training to become basketball table officials for league matches in the country, with the season still scheduled to begin in September.

“Practically there are no women table officials at all locally and only two women coaches in the entire leagues of 64 teams,” Odera told Daily Nation Sport.

“Based on this unfortunate situation, we as women have undertaken a capacity-building initiative to ensure we improve on this area by training as many women officials as possible,”

To date, there are only 25 qualified female coaches in the Kenya Basketball Federation-affiliated leagues.

“It is a very unfortunate situation where only two women coaches are actively coaching premier league teams, among them long-serving Eagle Wings coach Everlyne Kedogo and most recently Sylvia Kamau who was appointed Equity Bank women basketball team coach in February,” Odera said.

Odera appealed to female former players to remain in the game, in whatever role they could.

“After the coaches’ training, we want to slowly start invading the male-dominated territory by introducing the women coaches to premier league clubs as assistant coaches as they gather the confidence to take over the mantle as head coaches in premier league team’s”, she said.

In partnership ANA and Sports Leo