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GTTA describes year as challenging
Godfrey Munroe
2010 looks exciting – Munroe
By Edison Jefford
General Secretary of the Guyana Table Tennis Association (GTTA), Godfrey Munroe has revealed that 2010 could be a very exciting year for the sport, following a few unexpected challenges that affected it over this calendar year.
“Next year looks exciting. A lot of the things we had hoped to achieve this year we didn’t given the circumstances,” Munroe candidly settled in a telephone interview with Kaieteur Sport yesterday, where he assessed their performance.
He said that they had managed to win an ‘unprecedented’ number of international medals in St Kitts, French Guiana and Trinidad and Tobago with their national teams, but in light of a few developmental programmes, there were glitches.
“If you look at Trenace [Lowe] not being able to go to the Pan American Games in Chile after being on the Caribbean team, it would be a little disappointment,” he noted, making every effort to buffer that with aspects of progress.
“Our Boys’ Under-10 team won gold at the Cadet Championships. There performance at that event was good. Idi Lewis, Michelle John, Trenace all did well this year at the senior level too. So it was not that bad overall, but a lot of things on the domestic level were still to be had,” Munroe asserted.
In that regard, the GTTA General Secretary said that the schools’ table tennis programme and lack of funding were two of the principal issues that prevented the decentralisation of the sport, which is one of their focus points.
However, the association have secured and have finalised a major arrangement with India -based, STAG International where a quantity of equipment will be shipped to Guyana for developmental purposes near the end of January 2010.
Munroe noted that the agreement is a three-year deal with the company. The arrival of the equipment would tremendously boost the association’s cache, which would further any of the decentralisation plans and mulling of the GTTA.
“It [STAG’s deal] would be good for us in terms of kick starting the schools’ programme. When that happens, we expect the programme to balloon because if you really look at it, the schools should be the home of table tennis,” he said.
In the projection of the association, some 52,000 students will be targeted across Guyana in a move that was expected to commence this year. However, the association is hoping for a lot of results from this initiative next year.
“In some regard, we had things in place for the decentralisation programme, but with our lack of the equipment, there was not much that we could have done because some regions are definitely depending on us,” Munroe indicated.
The hinterland regions, Munroe said, are among those that need the support of the GTTA to get tables and other equipment to them so that their pilot programme could be initiated and the sport could be disseminated appropriately.
Malteenoes Sports Club has taken some of the burden off of the Cliff Anderson Sports Hall recently with the 2009 GTTA League and Today’s Masters’ Tournament being some of the events hosted at Malteenoes.
This newspaper understands that the Mildred Mansfield Sports Club and YMCA are two of the other clubs that will be targeted in Georgetown while there is an intention to target villages on the East Coast and East Bank. “We have the Commonwealth Games and the Central American and Caribbean Games in the new year. So we have to prepare our players well. If we have all those clubs up and in good shape, we will have a good corps of players,” he said.
The National Championships that did not come off this year is also on the agenda for the upcoming 2010 calendar year. Munroe said that the crème de le crème of Guyanese table tennis players will be invited to this mega event.
Generally the aim of the GTTA next year is to learn from the challenges of 2009 and gear to make the sport sustainable and profitable. The association’s AGM and Election will be held at the end of January or early February.
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