How ‘hunger’ drove OBB to volleyball title

OBB played the National Volleyball League finals like they have been at this stage for years. Yet it is only their maiden season in the top-flight.

They made light work of Nemostars to win the series 2-1 and lift the trophy Sunday night at Old Kampala Arena.

Having lost the opener of the three-game final series, the Iganga-based side used the seven days between the first two games to make adjustments.

“We realised the errors we made in Game One and went back to work on them,” Lawrence Yakan OBB head coach told Daily Monitor.

OBB were the better side through the series and only lost Game One after stepping off the pedal in the fourth set. 

But throughout the series, OBB served well and this saw Nemostars struggle to get a good first pass to the setter to facilitate their offence. The men in orange also blocked and defended well in the back court to ensure Nemostars worked for all their points.

Hungry

Nemostars might have had the experience but OBB showed more hunger.

“The boys wanted it and you could see the work on court,” Yakan said.

With all the faces on the team searching for a first league title, the fighting spirit showed how much they wanted it.

Libero Sharif Nabanji went down for every ball while the court line ups tried to block everything Nemostars threw at them.

“We needed to win it and everyone has had to dig deep for this,” opposite Ivan Ongom told this paper.

Saw it coming

As early as the regular season, both Yakan and Ongom revealed that the side had what it takes to challenge for the league title. There were still doubts from the volleyball fraternity, emphasised by OBB’s 3-0 loss Sport-S in the first round.

The doubts, however, started fading when OBB came from a set down to defeat Nemostars 3-1 in the first round.

They went on to defeat Sport-S 2-0 in the semi-finals and now have the league title in their hands.

Yakan revealed: “When I saw the players at the start of the season, I saw potential. I realised I just had to give them more time, improve some of them and most of them have now picked up.”

This is history

No one would have paid a lot of attention to OBB losing to Nemostars in the finals. The six-time champions had a line up that featured four Volleyball Cranes starters and were seen as favourites.

Nemostars had won the last four league titles while OBB wanted their first.

“This is history. For a team to come from Serie B and become champions in Serie A straight away is amazing.

“For me, it is the first time to win the league as a coach. This is really great.”

Poor Nemo

Nemostars were bad throughout the series and will agree that the best team took the series. Even when their reception stabilised, offence remained a big problem for the six-time champions.

The high block of Muothic Salva Marial cut out Bernard Malinga’s attack while George Aporu failed to scale the heights he did in previous seasons.

Jonathan Tumukunde, yet again, failed to rise to the occasion at the big stage.

The opposite failed to play against Nemostars in the 2017 finals as he featured for UCU Doves and the nerves got the better of him again.

Barnabas Tugume was the first to fail the big test and was replaced in the line up by Tom Amou, who went on to play the rest of the series.

Not even switching setters from Smith Okumu to Moses Odeke could work. Nemostars were simply not good enough and in OBB, they faced a team playing like their lives depended on each point. 

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