A five-day softball coach clinic organized by the WBSC in conjunction with the Softball federation of Kenya came to a close yesterday on Jamhuri day as more than 30 players were trained to be skilled coaches.
The clinic was done at Multimedia University of Kenya where 14 managed to be level two coaches while 22 others were certified with level one.
This drew players and current coaches from all universities playing softball to represent their teams and get trained on coaching mechanics on softball as well as baseball and the new game of Baseball5 (derived from softball and baseball) that is fast taking root in America and Europe.
Andrea D’auria, instructor for WBSC and Romanian national team coach was the lead instructor for the clinic alongside Coach Valeria Bortolomai who is also a national team player for Italian Women Softball national team having played 13 seasons in top divisions.
D’auria who has been coaching since 2002 says his focus now is in international training since he partnered with WBSC in 2013 for development project for Africa in Softball and Baseball.
This was the first time for Coach Valeria accompanied D’auria for a WBSC clinic as she was working for USSSA Pride, an American softball organization where Andrea is the Vice President. “Training was good, and I hope the local coaches have learnt a lot. It’s their job now to develop the sport in their country and follow the learning, ” said Instructor D’auria. He observed that training Kenyans was easier than most of their counterparts in Africa as they learn faster due to their prior exposure in the sport.
Lack of equipment-balls, gloves and batting-tee was cited as the key challenges in the development of softball in Kenya and within Africa but the WBSC has vowed to deal with it in their development of Africa project for softball where they will partner and support softball federations.
“The clinic was a great success and we thank the WBSC for the support. We can proudly say that we have at least two qualified coaches for each softball team and hence the performance at club level will significantly improve,” said Mr. Francis Karugu, Softball President, Kenya.
The softball national league is set to resume at the end of January next year at Kenyatta University.
