Defending football champions Thur Gem High School loses as Onjiko High School retains its title in a heated match held at Kisumu Polytechnic over the weekend in the ongoing Kenya secondary Nyanza Provincial sports tournament.
Riondonga High School ousted Thur Gem’ High School in the extra time. The match went into extra time after the score was 3-3 after 90 minutes. The gripping match later ended at 4-3 in the 7th minutes first half of the extra time. It was a thrilling encounter with the outcome in doubt right to the final whistle.
Riondonga came out with all guns blazing in the second half and put Thur Gem under immense pressure but the former champions defense was held firm to preserve their title. Their striker Denis Mongeri was given red card in the 62nd minutes.
A break through came from Shem Motari in the 55th minutes when they were awarded a free kick. With much vigor, Jared Osoro added the second goal in the 57th minutes. Kevin Momany equalizes the goals in the 80th minutes. The all-important goal came in the 7th minutes when John Nyamweya rose highest to head home a perfectly lighted Shem Motari’s cross.
In the preliminaries, Riondonga beat Kodero Obara High 1-0 and later drew with Nyangiki 1-1 to qualify for the quarterfinals. They thrashed Otieno Oyoo 2-0 in the quarterfinals to book a place in the semi-finals. Their candle kept glowing as they silenced St. Mary’s Yala 2-0 in the semi finals.
Thur Gem’s High School preliminaries started by beating Ramba High School 3-0 and drew with Otieno Oyoo 0-0 to qualify for quarterfinals. They beat Kodero Obara High 2-0 to qualify for the semi-finals with goals coming from Oliver Tala through a penalty kick in the 8th minutes and Elisha Odhiambo in the 60th minutes.
The former football champions made a debut in the finals when they beat Nyabondo High School 3-0 in the semi-finals. The winning goals came from Kevin Oluoch in the 54th minutes. Oluoch once played in the under 17. Noah Odhiambo’s second goal came in the 70th minutes and Chester Okoyo wounded up in the 73rd minutes.
Enock Obwaka who is Riondonga’s coach said his team played a good game and promised to reach finals in the National level, which is scheduled to kick off as from 14th August 2003 in Kisumu.” From now we are going to embark on thorough training and I hope we will be able to reach finals come 14th this month,” he said. His Thur Gem counterpart, Gordon Akoko accepted defeat and wished them success.
In volleyball, Onjiko High School retains its tittle after beating Wang’apala High School 3 sets to 2. Onjiko manages to reach finals when they thrashed Marindi High School 4 sets to 1.Wang’apala High School also qualify for the finals after beating Sigomeri High School 3 sets to nil.
Earlier Onjiko qualify for the semi-finals after beating Miranga 3 sets to nil while Wang’apala High School manages to reach semi-finals after beating Ngere High School 3 sets to 2.
Joseph Ojwang is a free-lance journalist. He contributed above article to Media Monitors Network (MMN) from Kenya, Africa.
