NAIROBI, Aug. 16 (Xinhua) -- Kenya has been pooled alongside champions Nigeria in the beach volleyball at the Africa Games, which starts on Aug. 19-30 in Rabat, Morocco.
Other teams in the group are Gambia and Benin.
The discipline has attracted 16 teams, and Kenya, which last won a medal in the sport back in 2011 through Dorcas Ndasaba and Margaret Indakala, will be keen to return to the medal table in Morocco. Head coach Patrick Owino has exuded the confidence of bringing home a gold medal.
"Our preparations have been good at the beachfront and the players have the experience; they deserve to dominate at the Africa Games. My target is to win gold but should we fall short of that then we should settle for silver," said Owino on Friday in Nairobi.
The beach volleyball team, which has Naomi Too and Gaudencia Makokha, departed for Rabat confident to improve on the bronze medal they scoped at the inaugural Beach Games championships in Cape Verde in May.
"The African Beach Games offered the players the competitive edge and what it takes to win at the big stage. We have reviewed our performance and rectified the mistakes we made and this time around, we are going to improve," said Owino
The 16 teams, for men and women competition, have been divided into four preliminary pools of four teams each.
The top two teams in each gender qualify to the single-elimination round to decide the top eight teams, while the third and fourth-ranked teams fight for the 9th to 16th places.
Men Pools:
Pool A: Morocco- Gambia- Tunisia- Libya
Pool B: Mozambique- Mauritius- Nigeria- Egypt
Pool C: Angola- Rwanda- Algeria- Benin
Pool D: Sierra Leone- Ghana- South Africa- Sudan
Women Pools
Pool A: Morocco- Namibia- Sierra Leone- Sudan
Pool B: Nigeria- Kenya- Gambia- Benin
Pool C: Mauritius- Rwanda- Algeria- Zimbabwe
Pool D: Mozambique- Egypt- Niger- Senegal
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