Thursday 06th March, 2025 03:00 AM|
Kenya’s tennis scene continues to grapple with monetary challenges, but amid these struggles, younger abilities like Ashley Wafula are rising, decided to make a reputation for themselves.
Fresh from competing within the 2025 ITF Africa Junior Championship, the promising star has left an impression on the courtroom, although Kenya’s junior boys’ and ladies’ groups struggled on the event, which concluded on Saturday on the Nairobi Club.
However, balancing expertise improvement and teachers stays a problem for a lot of mother and father. Ashley’s father, Jimmy Sichangi, acknowledges this delicate steadiness, emphasising the position of schooling programs in nurturing younger athletes.
“It’s a very delicate balance between sports and academics,” he explains. “Fortunately, Ashley is studying the British curriculum, which not only focuses on academics but also nurtures talents. I believe the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) in Kenya was designed to achieve the same goal.”
Beyond tennis, Ashley is a multi-talented athlete, excelling in swimming, soccer in addition to netball. Her capacity to juggle a number of sports activities whereas sustaining tutorial excellence speaks volumes about her self-discipline and resilience.
Reflecting on her expertise on the lately concluded ITF Africa Junior Championship, Ashley stays optimistic about her future.
“I have picked up important lessons at the competition, and moving forward, I’ll keep working on myself socially and technically. It has been a learning experience,” she says.
Sichangi attributes Ashley’s success to the unwavering help she has obtained. “I feel like our efforts have yielded good results by enabling Ashley to reach her fullest potential,” he says.
His recommendation to different mother and father is obvious: nurture kids’s abilities early.
“Children will only discover their potential in sports when they are young. It is therefore important to support them in whichever sport they like.”
Despite Ashley’s achievements, the truth stays that Kenyan tennis nonetheless faces quite a few challenges, together with restricted funding, inflexible college timetables, and insufficient sports activities infrastructure.
While Kenya has historically positioned higher emphasis on teachers, the rise of CBC goals to offer a extra balanced method.
However, many younger athletes nonetheless wrestle as a consequence of an absence of assets and structured help programs.
Sichangi insists that whereas sports activities are very important, teachers stay a precedence.
“Although academics still take precedence in order of importance, sports enable children to cultivate virtues like discipline, hard work, and teamwork. Those who are extremely talented may benefit from scholarships or even go professional,” he explains.
For Ashley, the dream of dominating tennis stays alive, and with the precise buildings in place, she might be one in all Kenya’s subsequent massive stars within the sport, similar to the sensational Angela Okutoyi.