Hosts play Capital City teams in girls’ and boys’ football Primary Games finals

By PHILIP ORWA

Isaack Juma, a football fan enjoys the proceedings.  [PHOTOS: PHILIP ORWA]

Hosts Lake Region and Metropolitan are set for a bruising battle in the football finals after their girls’ and boys’ teams won their respective semi-final matches in the National Primary Schools Ball Games in Kisumu.

In the first football boys’ semi-final, Lake Region defeated Nzoia 3-1 while Metropolitan eliminated Nakuru by the same score line to advance to the final scheduled for today.

In the first match, Lake Region scored their goals through Samuel Michael who scored a brace with a goal each in the 16th and 73rd minute before Billy Otieno added a third goal in the 73rd minute.

Consolation goal

Nzoia’s Salim Hamisi scored the consolation in the 89th minute of the encounter.

In the second semi-final match, Metropolitan outclassed Nakuru 3-1 with Martin Nado scoring a brace for the winners with a goal each in the 45th and 61st minute.

Kevin Laktano of Nakuru narrowed the gap to 2-1 when he scored but Metropolitan struck in the dying minutes of the match to claim 3-1 victory and a ticket to the final.

Winning goal

In the girls’ category, Lake Region’s football girls’ team beat Nzoia 1-0 in one of the semis with the winning goal from Eunice Auma coming in the 43rd minute.

The girls’ team set up a date with defending champions Metropolitan after both teams beat Nzoia and Nakuru with an identical 1-0 score line again.

Metropolitan edged out Nakuru 1-0 in the other semi-final encounter to set a finals date with Lake region.

Metropolitan’s winning goal came from Hellen Waywa’s two minutes to the final whistle during the matches played at Kisumu Polytechnic yesterday.

The matches were played on soggy and slippery fields as a result of torrential rains that pounded the Lakeside City the previous night.

The bad weather did not dampen the spirits of hundreds of fans, among them the phenomenal Isaac Juma, who turned up to cheer respective teams.

But unruly behaviour by home fans that defied the rules and poured onto the pitch to celebrate a goal every time the home sides scored disrupted the flow of the games as officials intercepted to restore order.

Semis matches

In netball,  Nzoia and Lake Region battle it out in semi-final matches scheduled for today.

Nzoia topped Pool “A” with nine points while Lake were placed second in Pool “B” on six points.

The second semi-final pit Pool “B” leaders Nakuru who accumulated nine points against Pool “A” runners-up Mombasa who bagged three points.

In matches played, Lake defeated Northern 27-03, Nzoia hit Northern 34-04, Lake beat Aberdares 47-02 and Northern defeated Aberdares 18-08 in Pool A.

Capital City

In Pool B, Metropolitan ran over Garissa 30-01 but the team from the Capital City met their match in Nakuru who beat them 24-12.  Nakuru again silenced Garissa 18-03 before Coast walloped Garissa 21-04.

In the boys’ handball, Lake play Nakuru in the first semis while defending champions Nzoia meet Northern in the other match. In the girls’ category, the semi-finals will again be a Nzoia (defending champions) verses Coast and Lake against Nakuru affair.

The second day of the games was graced by the Director of Basic Education Leah Rotich who thanked participants for staging incident free activities.

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