Kenyan stars help Swedish side gain promotion

Harambee Starlets striker Elizabeth Katungwa is on top of the moon after helping her Swedish team FC Dalhein gain promotion to the country’s second-tier league.

Katungwa left the country on August 3 for the Stockholm-based club alongside her fellow Starlets striker Mary Kinuthia after being courted by the Swedish Division One side since 2018. She has scored two goals in the seven matches she has featured in for the team.

At the time of joining the team, Dalhein, who finished fifth in the third-tier league last season, were lying eighth on the log. She helped guide them to the current second position on the log even after missing one match due to a delay in acquiring her International Transfer Certificate.

“I feel very excited that I made a contribution to this team when they needed me most and can only dream that we qualify for the country’s top league in our first attempt from Division One”, the former Kwale Girls High School striker, who plays as an attacking midfielder for her new team said.

In the seven matches Katungwa featured in, FC Dalhein, at the time an average team, won five matches and lost two. They beat FC Lindhagen 4-1, IFK Hanige 4-0, Lidingo 3-1 and P18IK 5-2 but lost to FC Djursholm 3-1 and Bele Barkeby 5-2 in second leg matches after the first leg was cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Katungwa, who is 21, also plays for the Dalheim Youth team which is currently playing in the third Division.

She has played three matches for the youth team, scoring six times and providing four assists.

In the youth team, she plays in her preferred role as a striker.

“Playing for two teams has been so demanding because it means putting more effort to march the demands since the senior team plays during weekends and the youth team plays in midweek,”  the speedy Katungwa, who has also won four penalties for the senior team, said.

As a student, Katungwa helped Kwale Girls High School win Coast region’s first ever national secondary schools football title in 2018, a feat that earned her the most outstanding player award in the schools category during the 2019 Sports Personality of the Year Awards.

Katungwa was due to fly out to Sweden in April after agreeing personal terms with Dalheim but could not travel because of the Covid-19 pandemic which saw Kenya ban all international flights for four months till August 1.

Katungwa was spotted by Kwale Girls schools coach Mukasa Amboko in November 2015 when Kwale County Department of Sports organized inter-ward competition to select 25 players to play for the county team in Kenya Youth Inter County Sports Association games.

At that time, she was a student at St John’s Kaloleni School, coached by Joseph Oyoo. She helped Kwale County to reach the final of the KYSA games for the first time in 2017.

She had scored a brace in 2016 national school games in Kisumu to help her St John’s Kaloleni lift the national title for the first time.

She then joined Form Two at Kwale Girls in the third term of the same year.

The turning point in Katungwa’s career would be in 2018 where as a skipper she led Kwale Girls to a historic double Nationals and East Africa games emerging MVP at the nationals and top scorer at the East Africa School games with six goals.