Straycats: Playing it Forward
By Sam Njau
I joined JKUAT in 1998 and found a team that ran quite well. Fresh men were quickly integrated into the university’s main playing unit. When we left campus, we went on to meet annually to catch up and do trips together etc. This included the ladies’ team (Lynx). Imagine communicating via Yahoo groups back then!! Later when WhatsApp came, we formed a group and it was easier to communicate. All this while, any Straycats alumni would be added to the WhatsApp group. We have met annually all these years, even now with spouses and children. We help each other through weddings, celebrate children, death, divorce, graduations… yaani life. We have guys living outside the country who are sometimes even more active than us and we try to organize our annual meetups in December when they’re here for the holidays.
When Munene told us about KSBC and the league, we jumped at the idea.
Biggy and I might be the face, but there’s a whole team behind this. We raise funds kidogo kidogo for kits, water, fare for the young ones, nyama/drinks after games etc
That’s the basketball side. We have a vibrant group made up of younger guys that we use to run league operations. This is mainly the playing unit and a few of the older heads.
But we want to do life together. So, we take time to mentor and encourage the younger guys, help them navigate the more important issues of school, girls, drugs and more. It is a very tightly knit unit. We (the older guys who are now better established in employment, business etc,) also try as much as possible to link our younger ones with internships and job opportunities. The presence of guys who’ve passed through the Kenya Morans goes a long way in showing the up and comers that they can also achieve and exceed such heights.
We are building a Straycats family where we help each other through life and each person learning to pay it forward. We hope decades from now there will be a kid joining JKUAT, playing basketball, getting absorbed into the Straycats family, becoming an alumni, playing for leagues such as this one, maybe getting helped to get a job, through life, and also doing the same to another younger guy joining Straycats.
