Edghill challenges for ‘Junior Sportswoman’

Jan 13, 2011 Sports

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– Straker, Stephenson stand in her path

By Edison Jefford

Guyana’s foremost junior table tennis player, Chelsea Edghill, will present a strong challenge for the ‘Junior Sportswoman of the Year’ National Award but middle distance athlete, Jevina Straker and swimmer, Jessica Stephenson stand firmly in her path.
This category of the National Awards should hand the judges some measure of difficulty because Edghill, Straker and Stephenson each had defining moments in 2010 to substantiate the challenge for the award that is expected to be given to either one of them.
What will be even more complex for the National Sports Commission (NSC) judges panel would be who to exclude since only two awards are given in the category. The Junior Sportswoman and Runner-up Junior Sportswoman are the two existing prizes. It means that one of the three performing female junior athletes will be omitted in the final ruling on the 2010 awardees. However, to have some idea of how close is this race, we will have a look at what the judges will be basing their decision on: performances.
Edghill
Beginning with Edghill, the 13-year-old Malteenoes Sports Club racquet wielder literally became the future of female table tennis in Guyana last year. In a fairytale parlance, anything she touched turned to gold, which is her basis for the National Award.
Edghill rose to ultimate prominence when, after a few local tournaments, she snatched up the 13-Years-and-Under gold medal at the Cadets and Junior Caribbean Championships in Puerto Rico after an outstanding start to her competitions programme last year.

The Caribbean gold medal is her highest achievement last year, and in her career. It preceded the three titles she won at the Business College Inter-School tournament; the one title at Oscar Shew Memorial and seven titles at the Mashramani Championships.
Edghill was also outstanding at the NSC Independence Championships; winning three of the four categories she contested before playing in the New York Table Tennis Federation Open Series to improve her international rating and then the Caribbean Championships.
Her performance at the Caribbean Championships, which gave her the enviable status as perhaps the best female table tennis player under 13 years in the region, earned her a place at the Pan Am Games last October in the Dominican Republic. Edghill reached the quarterfinals at those Games but eventually lost to the player that went on to win the title.
Upon her return from the Dominican Republic, Edghill continued her rout of opponents locally when she won two titles at the Digicel National Inter-Schools Championships. She confirmed an obvious place at the helm of local table tennis with an unprecedented eight titles at the VitaMalt National Table Tennis Championship, which was held last December.
It is against the background of those outstanding local, regional and international performances, that the Guyana Table Tennis Association (GTTA) is likely to submit Edghill, who has an ITTF rating of 1713, as their candidate for the NSC National Award.
Straker
Straker, who won the Girls Under-17 1500 metres gold medal at the 2009 Junior Carifta Games in St. Lucia, returned last year to repeat the feat at the Truman Bodden Sports Complex, George Town, Cayman Islands early in April in another stellar performance.
Winning medals at the Caribbean’s leading track and field competition for junior athletes, which is the CARIFTA Games has been a rare occasion for Guyana. So for Straker to win back-to-back gold medals at that prestigious forum will give her some attention.
Straker enters the contest for ‘Junior Sportswoman of the Year’ as the 2009 winner of the award she won on the basis of her CARIFTA performance.

She has since repeated the performance, but will that be enough to convince the judges a second time around.
The athlete dominated local track and field last year after bursting on the scene the year before in am emphatic manner. Her ascendency from the 400m fourth place finish at the Schools’ contests in 2007 to CARIFTA stardom will not, and cannot be overlooked.
She is also a multi-gold medallist at the Hampton International Games in Trinidad and Tobago. It would have been a sealed deal as it relates to the ‘Junior Sportswoman of the Year’ if Straker had won, even placed, at the South American Youth Championships.
Straker competed at the South American event in Chile in October last year, but altitude proved a nightmare for the Guyanese middle distance star. Her struggle became obvious when Rupununi’s Doretta Wilson defeated her twice at the 2010 Schools’ Championships.
Before Chile, the 16-year-old Straker had returned a personal best time in the 1000m event at the Youth Olympics in Singapore mid August.
The last Junior Sportswoman to be awarded ran 2:57s to place fourth in the ‘B’ final of the international track meet. The Athletics Association of Guyana has already made it clear that Straker will be their nominee for the ‘Junior Sportswoman of the Year’ award again. The NSC panel will decide whether she is deserving of the accolade when they review her performances.
Stephenson
The Trinidad and Tobago-based Stephenson should get the attention of the judges for most of the solo performances that emanated from the 15 year old. Stephenson came to the fore in 2008 with her gold medal performance at the Junior CARIFTA Games.
Since then, the swimmer has distinctively represented Guyana, which climaxed with the four-day CARIFTA Swimming Championship in Kingston, Jamaica last April when she won three medals for her country that included two gold medals and one bronze.
Stephenson is the only Guyanese swimmer that has returned medals at this level in recent history and what made the feat even more significant was the fact that she returned from a major surgery on her shoulder in 2009 and was in doubt over her swimming career.
However, Stephenson brushed aside the career-threatening surgery with intense training sessions that resulted in three CARIFTA medals for Guyana. Her medals ensured that Guyana finish tenth overall since no other swimmer got even close to the podium.
The national emphasis on the young swimmer was made clearer when she was named as the lone representative at the XXI Central American and Caribbean Games in Puerto Rico. The meet was held in July and Stephenson swam in the 200m breaststroke.
She finished 14th of the 21 competitors with a personal best time in the race.
Stephenson is likely to be the Guyana Amateur Swimming Association’s nominee for the ‘Junior Sportswoman of the Year’ award in a close contest among three outstanding female junior sportswomen.

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