VOA常速英语:未来可期：肯尼亚成立首支冰球队

Training takes place three times a week at Thesola ice rink. It’s here at Kenya’s Panera Sky Center that the Kenya Ice Lions, the first ice hockey team in Kenya, was formed. Tim Colbey moved to Nairobi from Ottawa in 2010 to offer the Canadian high commissioner. Several months later, he would help train and coach Kenya’s first ice hockey team. Years ago, a few of Kenyans really wanted to take it up, step it up a notch, play a lot more more serious, attract more people in a real hockey games. So we took it all with a few other Americans, Canadians, Slovak, Swedes and others. We start helping out a bit, but soon it didn’t take long for the kids to take it all over themselves.
Up to last year, the Ice Lions team still did not have another team to play, so the Canadian restaurant chain Tim Hortons brought members of the team to play their first real game against the team of firefighters from Toronto.

Gideoon Mutua was part of this team, and he says ice hockey has changed his life forever. My biggest dream is to play in a game. You get paid just to play, so one day I think my dream will be fulfilled. It is the young players where the future of Kenya ice hockey lies. It’s used to be about 10-12 Kenyans playing. Now up to around thirty. At least half of them are young. When I say young, I mean under fifteen which is really good for the sport in the future. Alibaba and Tim Hortons have provided sponsorship and equipment to the team. Support for the team has also come from Finland, Sweden and Czechoslovakia. While the Ice Lions still have no other team to compete against at home, they hope that things may change in the future as a new generation continues to embrace the game.
Rael Ombuor, for VOA News, Nairobi.