Malkia Strikers yet to hit camp ahead of international assignments

National women’s volleyball team, Malkia Strikers who were set to have travelled to Morocco this weekend for training ahead of two crucial international assignments are yet to leave the country.

The team was scheduled to hold a week-long training camp in Nairobi after a team of 20 was named on 31 May then head out to the North African country on 10 June for another camp before leaving for France.

Malkia Strikers are scheduled to play in the four-team Nations Challenger Cup, the competition that qualifies teams for the prestigious Volleyball Nations League (VNL), in France from 25 to 30 June.

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VNL is an international volleyball competition contested by the senior women's national teams of the members of the FIVB introduced in 2018 replacing the World Grand Prix, a former annual women's international event that ran between 1993 and 2017.

“The team is yet to begin training locally. We expected to hit camp on Wednesday 14 June in Nairobi as talks between the government and the federation of the other trips continue but that has not happened.

I understand there were Visa hitches, we have acquired the Moroccan ones but the France visas are yet to be processed. We continue to wait on direction from the federation on the way forward as we have two weeks to prepare,” head coach Paul Bitok revealed.

After the Challenger Cup, the team is scheduled to stay in France and hold six-week training in preparation for the Africa Cup of Nations slated for 18 to 30 August in Cameroon.

The training will be hosted in Miramas as part of the partnership between National Olympic Committee of Kenya (NOC-K) and Miramas Metropole ahead of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Part of the deal will see Team Kenya use the Miramas Stadium as a pre-camp site for the Olympics.

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Ahead of the trip to Morocco, the team’s technical bench was supposed to use the local training to trim the squad down to 16, thus dropping four.