NAIROBI, Kenya, Dec 14 – Kenya Lionesses head coach Dennis Mwanja is the first recipient of the Sports Journalists Association of Kenya (SJAK)/StarTimes coach of the month award, rewarded after leading the Kenyan girls to victory in the first round of the Rugby Africa Cup qualifiers in Uganda.
Mwanja led the Lionesses to victory in Uganda, hitting the hosts as well as Zambia in Group B of the Africa Cup qualifiers to progress to the main tournament next year.
“I am really delighted to receive this award We do so much work as coaches behind the limelight and this is definitely a motivation. We see players awarded and now having a coach also receive the award is something huge,” said Mwanja as he received the award.
He added; “I want to thank the Sports Journalists and sponsors StarTimes for this gesture. It goes a long way in motivating us to work more.”
The tactician, who also doubles as the KCB assistant coach walked home with a personalized trophy, a 55-inch StarTimes Smart TV and a Sh100,000 cash reward on top of everything.
To win the award, Mwanja beat tough competition from his club senior at KCB Curtis Olago, Starthmore’s hockey tactician Meshack Senge, Paul Gitau of Kenya Pipeline volleyball team and David Obuya of Cricket Kenya.
The award, which seeks to reward coaches from across all disciplines in the country was launched last month by StarTimes and the November award is the first.
StarTimes Public Relations Manager Alex Mwaura said they are delighted to be back partnering with SJAK, having previously worked together to award football coaches.
“We are delighted to be back with this noble initiative to reward our coaches and as a company we believe we need to take a leading role in promoting sports in the country and this is our little way of doing this,” Mwaura said.
SJAK Treasurer and Capital FM Sports Editor Alex Isaboke said they were delighted to be back rewarding top performing coaches.
“We have been rewarding players with our player of the month award and now it is a delight to see that we are also rewarding coaches because most
