2015 Kenya National Baseball4Africa Tournament

Teams gather from all across Kenya for the National Tournament

Hitting Strategy Talks at the Plate

This season of baseball4africa has culminated in an amazing National Tournament held at the Machakos Teachers College here in Kenya on Saturday, Oct 10th. It has been a very productive season. For the first time ever we have had 4 coaches here volunteering with the program. We were able to get two teams from the Machakos Teachers College up and ready for the tournament. Two pretty strong teams from Nairobi showed up that have been trained by Jim in the past. A community team from Kabete hired a matatu (shared van) for the day to come play. And one of our past students, Darious, managed to bring two of our normal schools out bringing the total to seven teams to compete for the trophy.

  After a few stressful minutes spent finding someone to open the gate to the fields we entered the Machakos ball fields with brand new baseballs, bats, and trophies in town. Following us in were buses from Ngotoo and Matiku schools, and the boys from Machakos were already on the field warming up. We quickly got the first four teams playing which turned out to be a good plan since the three other teams showed up shortly after.

Matiku Prestige

Kabete boys

   The seven teams ended up playing round robin pool style so 3 games each. I helped to umpire, coach, and play throughout those 21 games.At the end of pool play we had the Giants and Matiku facing each other in the championship game, while the Ryderz and Kabete Vikings met in the 3rd place match. We also staged a Machakos Green vs Machakos Blue game to see who the champion of Machakos College would be. In the end Machakos Blue salvaged some pride after a week of losses to Green in practice games all week, Ryderz took it to the 12 year old from Kabete, and the Giants won it all with a 10-4 nail biter over Darious and the Matiku Prestige.

Jock Strap Hat?

  Two weeks earlier with the schools all closed for the teachers' strike, and our baseball4africa schedule thrown to the wind, we weren't sure how the tournament was going to go, or if it was going to go at all. But as always, the baseball community came together to provide a wonderful opportunity for the youth of Kenya to show off their incredible athleticism and competitive spirit through the wonderful game of baseball. There were some amazing catches, throws, stretches, and line drives which added up to some pretty great baseball.

Giants and Machakos High Fiving

   The skill level has come a long way in the past 10 years since my first trip to Kenya. It was great to see one of the kids I taught 10 years ago come back for this tournament as a successful young man, helping out the Kabete team and still wanting to be a part of baseball in Kenya. Leonard was the pitcher at Kiongwani Secondary School on the very first team we ever created. He hadn't changed much and was still throwing fast balls. Dairous was on the 2010 Kiongwani team that won the championship, and now I got to see him back playing for Matiku and coaching a brand new school Ngotoo.

Jim addressing the crowd

Warming Up

  It feels like a great accomplishment to see the game come full circle like this. Students becoming coaches and spreading the game. Baseball seems to have really taken off here in Eastern Africa. Uganda is making news with their little league team going to the Little League World Series in the United States. Now I think it is Kenya's turn. Even though the tournament is over, coach Joe is going to stick around and find out where he can best fit into the baseball4africa teaching role. We leave him with good contacts and in good hands and wish him all the best.