National Olympic Committee of Kenya and partners of the Kenya Beach Games, Kilifi County Government and Buntwani Waterfront Park are in high gear preparations to get ready to bring sports people and fans together in celebration during the Games that will take place on 18th and 19th of March 2023.
Technical and administrative teams are on the ground at Buntwani in Malindi putting final preparations on the ground, to ensure that the fields and equipment are ready, and everything else around the event as we prepare to start receiving the players from Thursday.
The event schedule has been finalized, players are all expected to have arrived by Friday evening, when the opening ceremony will be held. There will also be activities around environmental sustainability. On Saturday preliminary rounds will be played in all sports, wrapped up by basketball 3×3 in the late evening. All finals will be played as showstoppers on Sunday.
Athletes’ registration is ongoing and expected to complete today by the close of the day. Over 500 athletes have registered in; aquathlon, basketball 3×3, judo, boxing, wrestling, taekwondo, beach handball, beach soccer, beach tennis, beach volleyball 4×4, coastal rowing, freestyle football, karate kata, and open-water swimming. Beach Football has so far the highest number of entrants.
Freestyle football was done as an online competition over a week. Very interesting videos were submitted and good entries received from across the country. Fans were able to vote by way of ‘likes’ on NOC-K’s social media. The entries closed today and the technical team is doing the evaluation to select the top three who will be invited to Kilifi to battle for the top prizes. This is expected to continue beyond the Kilifi Games, as we prepare for the second edition of the games in Lake Victoria region later in the year.
The sports program is therefore done, and all sports will be played around the beach. There will be a test event at the venue on Thursday organised by Kilifi County of beach soccer by local teams from Kilifi to test the venue, the facilities and equipment.
