Rwanda national volleyball team coach, Paul Bitok has won the ‘Community Hero’ Sportsman of the Year award in hi native Kenya.The former Kenyan international beat off stiff competition from Kenya’s skiing pioneer Philip Boit after a list of five nominees for the Safaricom Sports Personality of the Year Awards (SOYA) Community Hero category was reduced to two. Others in the rooster included Alfred Analo, Anthony Juma and Collins Agwanga. The Community Hero category seeks to award a person who goes out of his or her way to render services or disseminate knowledge to people without necessarily expecting to benefit or offering a selfless service to an organisation, a society, an association without getting or expecting to profit from the service. “I am happy with this award; it will give me the motivation to work even harder in order to promote volleyball back in my country (Kenya) and in Rwanda where i enjoy staying and working,” the former APR coach told this paper by phone on Friday.Bitok runs the Paul Bitok Foundation, based in Simat primary in Uasin Gishu. The former national volleyball coach is currently coaching in Rwanda.The foundation has nurtured and exposed many volleyball players and athletes to international level. They include Philip maiyo, now in Bulgaria, Philiste Mutembete, Rael Rotich, Suzan Atemba and Philster Jebet, all in USA, Mercy Moim and Lidya Tarus of Prisons and GSU’s Elphonse Biwot and Solomon Bitok.
