Women in sports celebrate international day in style
Wanjiku Mwenda
The ninth edition of the Kenya Universities Sports Association (KUSA) Women’s championships culminated at the Africa Nazarene University yesterday as female students from 33 universities across the country came together to celebrate the International Women’s Day in style.
Various teams took part in different sports disciplines among them football, basketball, badminton, tae-kwon-do, netball, volleyball, hockey, rugby, darts, softball, chess, table tennis, lawn tennis, scrabble, athletics, swimming and karate.
And for the first time in the history of the event, KUSA partnered with the National Olympic Committee of Kenya’s (NOCK) women’s commission, commonly known as Women In Sport Commission (WISC).
In line with the International Women’s Day theme which focused on gender equality and running under the hashtag #eachforequal, the commission used the championship platform to reach out to young women in sports, spreading the gospel of “realising women equality through sports”.
“WISC is mandated with increasing opportunities for the participation of women in sports in the country.
NOCK is leading the campaign of achieving equality through taking deliberate efforts to celebrate women’s achievements, empower them to take up leadership positions, supporting the participation of elite women athletes nationally and internationally and that is the reason we are here today,” said Paurvi Rawal, chairperson of the WISC.
The championship also gave women a platform to exploit their talent and improve the number of women participating in sports.
“Over the years, the event has seen numbers of participants increasing. This has therefore opened up an opportunity for NOCK to create awareness and empower the women to join national federations, take up management and leadership positions which contributes to a continuous cycle of empowerment in sports,” added Rawal.
In the same breath, NOCK through WISC, is interested in discovering the challenges women in sports are going through in the practice of sports in universities as a starting point to finding solutions to these challenges.
