Basketball in Africa

The top 16 basketball teams from the Coast Province will battle it out for top honours during the first edition of the Mombasa Sports Club Invitational basketball tournament this weekend.
The MSC basketball section captain, Frank Muteria, said teams will not be required to pay participation fee in the two day-event which has been fully sponsored by a member of the club.Muteria has appealed to teams to report from 8am for the draws and allocation of courts to allow the tournament to run smoothly.

Mombasa Sports Club women basketball team, still fresh from lifting the Kwale Open tournament, will get stiff challenge from the much improved Shimba Hills Secondary School, St Johns Kaloleni, and Margaret Wambui's Shanzu Teacher College.

Big contest

Other women's teams are Matuga Girls, Waa Girls, Changamwe Secondary, Mombasa Sports Club 'B' and Mombasa Polytechnic.

The boys' contest will see Mombasa Baptist High School and Shimba Hills Secondary settle their scores in the final of the Kwale Open tournament which failed to take off in Kwale due to darkness.
Other men teams invited include: Mombasa Polytechnic, Makupa Lakers, Changamwe Rollers, Shimba Hills Secondary and Mombasa Baptist High School.
Also invited are Changamwe Secondary, Khamis High School, and Waa Boys High School.
"Being the first major tournament at the club, we expect teams to come on time so that the programme can run uninterrupted, within the scheduled two days," Muteria said.
The schools teams and colleges will use the tournament as a build-up for the inter-schools and inter-colleges championships set for later this month.
Elsewhere, National girls' schools' champions Mombasa High School and Shimba Hills Secondary School girls have landed invitations to the All Star memorial basketball tournament in Nairobi on October 3.

Memory
ccording to Nellie Odera of Eagle Wings Promotions, the co-ordinator the event, the tournament, which is aimed developing girl child and women's basketball, has for the second year running been organised in memory of former stars Nancy Onkoba, Susan Agoya and Phoebe Orimba.

Odera said Eagle Wings Promotions was a sports promoting body that has been established to market and run sports programs for various disciplines.
"We are very interested in the overall development of the girl child and women as a whole. In this regard we intend to hold a memorial All Star game which we held last year in honor of three players, Nancy Onkoba, Susan Agoya and Phoebe Orimba, who we feel served the basketball fraternity exceptionally well especially in the Kenya national team," she said.