photo: KNF President Immaculate Kabutha gives Thirime Primary School teacher Dynah Otunge her certificate of attendance.Photo: Courtesy
120 Netball coaches, adminstrators, umpires, primary and high school teachers, University/College lectures from 30 Counties across the country showed up in Nairobi for the two day just concluded Kenya Netball Federation ( KNF ) Refresher and Harmonization Course at the Ulinzi Sports Complex last weekend.
Speaking on Monday in Nairobi, KNF president Immaculate Kabutha emphasized the need for capacity building saying that it enhances the quality of sport with the federation’s efforts to nurturing raw talents from grassroots.
” We are going to do more of this hoping that the knowledge gained here for the last two days on Saturday and Sunday, is going to be translated back to clubs. I am happy that now we are having more and more enthusiasts interested in knowing Netball, ” said Kabutha adding that strict laws from KNF will also be put into place during tournaments that are geared towards encouraging organizers to use only qualified and certified umpires from the federation.
The two day training course that commenced on Saturday was supervised by KNF vice fixture Secretary Suleiman Hassan and Mugisha Ali who is a Technical advisor and Kenya’s women national team coach.
” Among some of the fundamentals of netball are the five core values of fair play, player safety and taking to netball as a career. If that is well understood and efforts from the government and the federation are put into it, then Netball will develop in Kenya. I am happy that many interested parties have showed up today to learn these and many others that we have taught here,” said Mugisha.
In December 2023 World Netball (WN) launched updated Rules of Netball 2024 Edition, along with free educational rules resources and the new rules that came into play for all international matches from 1st January 2024.
The rules changes focus specifically on player safety and game management along with clarification and streamlining of existing rules such as contact and advantage.
The new layout of Rules has also been updated to simplify and encourage use by all of the Netball Family, not just umpires, an advantage to KNF aligning with Kabutha’s ideas of popularizing netball in all corners of the country as she handed over certificates of attendance to all participants of the two day event.
