Opel says league return a big boost for national teams

The Kenya women’s basketball team assistant head coach Mike Opel has welcomed the move by the government to allow the resumption of sports after just over a month during which the country was in partial lockdown.

Opel says restart of the league will make the national teams players who have been called up for international assignment be active hence making their work as coaches easier.

“The players we had called up for the international assignments will now be actively involved in sports and will make our work easier since we will be dealing with players who are always in fields and this will improve their level of fitness,” he said.

Opel who is also assistant head coach to KBF men’s league side Kenya Ports Authority (KPA) says sports wont spread the Covid-19 virus since they are playing without fans and most of the teams are vaccinated.

“It will help us so much since teams are now idle and it won’t increase the spread of Covid-19 now that we are playing without fans and most teams were also vaccinated,” he added.

The league fixtures are set to be announced by the end of the week with the league action expected to resume by May 15.

Last month Opel together with Eunice Ouma and Tony Ochieng were appointed to be assistant coaches with George Mayienga named new head coach.

The new technical bench is tasked in helping the team ahead of the 2021 FIBA Women’s AfroBasket Zone Five Qualifiers in July.

The qualifiers are scheduled to take place in Egypt from July 5-10 and the team is expected to report to camp soon to start preparations.

The last time Lionesses played in the prestigious continental tournament was in 2019 in Dakar Senegal where they finished at a dismal 11^th place out of the 12 participating teams.