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GTTA to name provisional national teams
– at meeting this weekend
By Edison Jefford
With the intention of exposing more players internationally and strengthening the base of the sport domestically, table tennis officials will meet this weekend to identify national provisional junior and senior squads.
General Secretary of the Guyana Table Tennis Association (GTTA) Godfrey Munroe told Kaieteur Sport yesterday that the intention is to have the teams meet at least three times every week for supervised training.
Godfrey Munroe
Munroe said that while the initiative to select early national table tennis squads is normal, many different things will be done this year to ensure that Guyana field strong teams to both regional and international tournaments.
“We will try to give players as much exposure while building our domestic game; we will be holding a meeting this weekend to name our national provisional junior and senior teams for all–round training,” Munroe informed.
The GTTA General Secretary said that the approach is to buffer participation in the sport at all levels, which cannot be accomplished if development on the international front is stymied for the local agenda and vice versa.
“While we are supervising teachers in the schools when our schools programme come on stream, we must have our national teams ready for international engagements,” Munroe reckoned, adding that there is a clear plan.
He had expressed disappointment in the review of the association’s 2008 performance in the suspected inability of the body to get the schools’ programme on track while boosting participation at regional competitions.
The GTTA felt the spoke in the wheel when they could not send a representative team to the Caribbean Championships in Jamaica, for instance. Munroe said that was a mistake that the association does not wish to repeat.
Linden Johnson
“Definitely we will be fielding teams,” he said yesterday, adding that the early focus is the World Cadets and Junior Qualification Championships tentatively set for Saint Kitts and Nevis sometime around Easter weekend.
According to the national table tennis coach attached to the National Sports Commission (NSC), Linden Johnson, the Caribbean Table Tennis Federation is to confirm the host country and the requisite dates for the qualifiers.
Asked how strong the current pool of cadet and junior players are, Johnson was quick to indicate that there is a lot of work to be done, which supports the association’s decision to name their national teams for training early.
“We are a bit shaky but we have a few outstanding players; we could do well if the guys hold their own,” Johnson said, while stating that the annual NSC Mashramani tournament will be used to assess the depth of players.
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