Osaka, Japan, September 29, 2019 – Kenya beat Cameroon 3-1 (25-15, 26-24, 14-25, 25-21) on the final day of the FIVB Women’s World Cup at Osaka’s Edion Arena on Sunday.
Kenya coach Paul Bitok: "I would like to congratulate my team. We started slowly in this tournament but learned a lot. Before today, we couldn’t win a match or a set and I decided from the first day that we must play high-level volleyball and learn from the big teams and how they play. We have copied some things and they have worked for us but we had some challenges in other matches because of our mistakes, especially on reception. It’s difficult to have a fast game when reception is bad, but today things worked really well for us. We received well and had good speed and made it difficult for Cameroon to block us. It’s usually a difficult match when we meet Cameroon. I appreciate the players accepting the new system and I believe that if we continue the same way, we will not only win against Cameroon but also against the big teams in the future. We will continue working in this way and I believe before January it will help us. Today, we realized that Cameroon’s middle block wasn’t good so we changed our plan this morning and tried to utilize our middle as much as possible which also meant we could run quick balls out wide like Brazil and Japan do. It’s working well."
Kenya captain Mercy Moim: "I want to thank my team for their hard work that helped us win our first match. It’s been very difficult for us since day one and we lost all our matches until today. After beating Cameroon, we are now in a better place compared to yesterday. Congratulations to Kenya for the win and also to Cameroon for putting up a good fight. We are like sisters and know each other well, but today we played better than them."
Cameroon coach Jean Rene Akono Bekono: "The result is regrettable and personally I am disappointed about the result, but looking at the way Kenya played I can’t help but say the result is fair. They played very well, while on our side we made mistakes both in terms of teamwork and individually. When we get back to Cameroon, we need to analyse how we played in this competition and find what we need to improve. Congratulations to Kenya for playing strong volleyball and representing Africa well in this tournament."
Cameroon captain Christelle Nana Tchoudjang: "I want to congratulate Kenya. It’s a shame for us as we felt we had a chance to win a game in thie World Cup, so it’s not what we were expecting. Sometimes in sport things don’t go the way you want, but there are many things we can learn from these results in order to improve."
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