SERENGETI Girls received heroic reception when they landed at Julius Nyerere International Airport (JNIA) in Dar es Salaam yesterday from India where they competed for the Under-17 FIFA Women's World Cup finals.

The brave girls marched into the quarter-finals of the biggest football showpiece after finishing second in their group D ahead of France and Canada.

Despite featuring at the contest for the first time, they excelled to get the better of the mentioned teams which have vast experience of playing in the World Cup.

It was really a good experience for them as they have now tasted the glimpse of playing at such high level hence working hard to resurface again in the upcoming edition is going to be their priority.

In group D, they began the campaign on back pedal after suffering a 4-0 defeat from Japan but that could not upset them as it simply acted as a wakeup call to focus on the next matches.

In the second encounter, they succeeded to defeat France 2-1 a result which helped a lot to put them back in the competition and boosted competency experience for the players.

Against Canada in the last match of the group, they picked a 1-1 draw which eventually qualified them to slide into the last eight courtesy of four points in the bag.

This was a great achievement for the envoys who worked hard to reach that far and they truly deserve kudos for flying high the national flag globally.

In the quarter-finals, the ride was tough after going down 3-0 from Colombia in a game which saw Serengeti Girls reduced to ten players on the pitch as such, it was an advantage for their opponent to dominate the match.

Africa is now represented by Nigeria who play Colombia on Wednesday in a battle for the finals slot while Germany take on Spain in another thrilling quarter-finals clash on the day.