What next after Kenya’s success in Commonwealth Youth Games?
Kenya Under-18 girls’ national rugby sevens players hurdle before a training session at Kasarani Annex on July 27, 2023 before the naming of the squad for the Commonwealth Youth Games slated for August 4-11 in Trinidad and Tobago.
What you need to know:
- Let’s help as many talented youth as possible excel in sport, and in life. Success might look like the next Collins Injera or Eliud Kipchoge.
- It might also be a higher education scholarship to turn around the life of a youngster and their family.
The curtain has come down on Commonwealth Youth Games in Trinidad and Tobago.
Our athletes under the age of 18 put up a great show, winning five gold, and four silver medals to finish sixth on the medals table. This is a huge improvement on the team’s performance in the previous edition in Nassau, Bahamas where Kenya won four medals. It is also Kenya’s best performance at the Commonwealth Youth Games.
By dominating the field and amassing medals in 800 metres, 3,000m, 1,500m, and para discus throw, the athletics team reminded the world of how Kenya is continuously churning out talent.
The dominance was slowed down by the limited number of athletes Kenya fielded, otherwise we would have harvested more medals. Kudos to the youngsters who competed in some events back-to-back.
Kenya also performed well beyond athletics. The beach volleyball duo of Sharon Jepkogei and Abigail Chebet, and the sevens rugby girls both finished fourth in closely-contested bronze matches on their debut.
This is a great achievement for the NOC-K Elite Youth Camps run in collaboration with affiliate federations. One of the major objectives of the camps is to increase competitive teams beyond our traditional areas. It is starting to bear fruit but there is still more ground to cover.
Back home, the Secondary Schools Term Two National Games witnessed great talents in Kakamega.
As I write this, I’m following the football final live, the live stream reaching more fans beyond the thousands who filled Bukhungu Stadium.
With this immense talent and success at youth level, the future is bright. But will we continue losing hundreds of great athletes at the transition stage? Perhaps it’s time we seriously addressed the transition of players from youth to senior categories.
As sports stakeholders, we must find avenues beyond schools where they can continue training and competing.
Clubs, leagues and wide international exposure, just to just mention some opportunities. Talent identification and development systems are commonly used all over the world in professional sport to convert youth athletes into sporting stars of the future.
While we have good platforms for talent identification, the follow through is what will determine the success of such a system.
These are however resource intensive and require substantial investment. Talent is lost out due to various external factors, including lack of exposure in programmes and activities, lack of the necessary equipment and coaches knowledgeable on talent identification and development. Furthermore, pathways to professionalisation require high amounts of training which might be a challenge to achieve with the current school structures.
Let’s help as many talented youth as possible excel in sport, and in life. Success might look like the next Collins Injera or Eliud Kipchoge.
It might also be a higher education scholarship to turn around the life of a youngster and their family.
