One of the Sierra Leone beach volleyball players, Patrick Lombi, has said they have achieved their aims and objectives by qualifying for the Commonwealth Games next April 2018 in Australia by defeating South Africa in the final by two games to one (2-1).
He said their qualification came with hard work and commitments under the Beach Volleyball Director, Sorie Kamara, who did everything possible to put them in a very good shape has a team we are very happy for.
According to Benson Bayoh, participating countries including; South Africa, number one in Africa, Mauritius, Seychelles, Lesotho, Rwanda, Nigeria and Ghana.
A pool of six male and five female teams played to a round robin with the four top teams progressing to the semi-finals and finals respectively.
At the end of pool play the ranking for men was as follows:
South Africa Sierra Leone Ghana, and, Nigeria who edged out Mauritius on head to head.
In the female category the hosts were bowled out early and this left the African Cup of Nations champions in Mozambique, Rwanda, topping the pool with arch rivals and All African Games champions, Nigeria following and then Mauritius and Seychelles.
On Day 3 of the tournament, the morning session was scheduled for the semi-finals which witnessed South Africa edging past Ghana by two straight sets; a feat that Sierra Leone repeated against Nigeria.
The Bronze Medal matches for both categories was thus Seychelles versus Mauritius in the female and an all-West African affair (Ghana versus Nigeria) in the male event.
Seychelles carried the day and so earned bronze whistle the more experienced Ghana struggled against a young but enterprising Nigerian side for a bronze medal in the male category.
The high point was the finals in both categories: Nigeria and Rwanda, desirous of merging either of their titles (AAG Brazzaville 2015 and CAN Mozambique 2017) with a commonwealth African medal under their belts.
The contest proved a two straight set win for a resilient Rwanda who thrilled the evening crowd to dives and spikes to the full admiration of the thronging crowds to the Association’s grounds at Leone Lodge.
In the men’s event, it was two of Africa’s finest -South Africa and Sierra Leone, number 1 & 2 respectively in the African Beach Volleyball rankings.
South Africa took the 1st set, 21:15, but their hopes for gold were thwarted by a spirited come back from the Sierra Leone pair of Lombi and Kamara, buoyed by an expectant and medal-hungry Sierra Leonean crowd beating the Mandela boys 21:16.
It was crunch time and a battle for 15 points.
From the first whistle, Sierra Leone raced away and lead the set 6:2. The South Africans took two giant points but again allowed the now charged Lumley beach atmosphere which edged the boys forward to 11:7.
A momentary scare erupted and the crowds were left with a gasp for breath when the South Africans scored successive points.
When the crowds took centre stage the battle cry energized by the match commentary team, there could only be one result: 15:13 advantage Sierra Leone.
Sierra Leone thus qualifies a team sport to the maiden edition of the beach volleyball event at the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth games in April.
Coach Sorie said the boys are going to create serious impact during the games as they are now focus and are more than determined. We are going to start effective training for the games next week to put them in better shape.
Tuesday October 31, 2017.
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