Beach volleyball: Kenya through to Commonwealth Games

Kenya women’s beach volleyball team will feature at the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games, organisers announced Monday.

The Kenyans, ranked third in Africa and 110th in the world, made it to the Games after the Commonwealth Games Federation, confirmed to the National Olympic Committee of Kenya (NOC-K) on Monday that Kenya had qualified for the games through the Athlete Allocation System and the team ranking.

This is after the International Volleyball Board (FIVB ) released the qualifying criteria for the Games last month.

"Following the award of the Commonwealth Games Association(CGA) slot, the top five CGA nations on the FIVB world ranking (men and women) as at 31 March will earn direct qualification.”

Morocco, who occupy the first two positions in Africa will not take part in the Games as they are not members of the Commonwealth.

Kenya men and women's beach volleyball teams were knocked out of the Commonwealth Games qualifiers at the Laboma Beach Resort in Accra, Ghana.

Despite losing their respective semis, the teams bounced backed to settle for bronze The women’s pair of Naomi Too and Veronica Adhiambo beat Rwanda 2-0 (23-21,21-19) to finish third in the competition.

Too and Adhiambo had lost to Ghana 1-2 (18-21,21-18,9-15) in the semi-final played earlier.

The men’s pair of Ibrahim Oduori and James Mwaniki defeated Ghana 2-0 ( 21-10,21-9) to win bronze.

Earlier, the duo had lost to South Africa 2-0 (21-18,28-26) in the semi-final.