By press time yesterday, no country in the CAVB Zone V had declared its readiness to participate in the forthcoming CAVB Youth Zone V qualifiers that are slated for first week of January in Kigali. Rwanda was pencilled in to host both the men’s and women’s zonal championships that would also act as qualifiers for the African Youth championships due in Algeria (men) and Egypt (women) in January and March, respectively.Speaking to TimeSport, the chairman of Rwanda Volleyball Federation, Philbert Mutwarasibo revealed that by deadline day yesterday no response had been gotten from Kenya, Uganda, Burundi, Tanzania, Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia. “We sent invitation letters in November to all Zone V countries as well as requesting countries to confirm their participation.”“However by today (yesterday) being the deadline day, we haven’t received any response” If no country responded in time (by midnight yesterday) Rwanda will automatically qualify for both events. The men’s team, under the auspices of Jean Marie Nsengiyumva, started preparations at Amahoro Indoor Stadium mid this week with a provisional 19-man squad.Rwanda will host both the youth boys and girls Zone V championships with Nsengiyumba in charge of boys’ team while Paul Bitok will handle the girls’ team which is currently in its preparations at Amahoro National Stadium. Bitok summoned sixteen players to the national U-17 team to represent Rwanda in the forthcoming CAVB zone V qualifiers.Bitok said he selected the team from the many players who were in residential training at Groupe Scolaire de Butare.Four more players are expected to be dropped from the selected team. Bitok was upbeat on the forthcoming tournament saying the team was seeking to qualify for the Africa Youth Championship due in Egypt in March.
