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Youth in Focus: The brilliance of Britton
By Edison Jefford
Shemar Britton is your quintessential student-athlete, who practices and plays table tennis on his off-days from school while maintaining a rigid curriculum at Queens College where he’s a fourth form student in the Art Stream at the top secondary institution.
But making table tennis sound like a past-time is not good enough for a 15 year old, who already has three major Men’s Singles titles under his belt with his most recent coming in the form of the Mashramani title that he won after toppling the 2012 National Champion.
Britton is brilliant in the classroom and on the table tennis board. Last weekend, he defeated
Shemar Britton
one of the sport’s wonder boys, Nigel Bryan, who won the 2012 National Senior Championships, but Britton outclassed him to win his third Men’s Singles title.
He had always had giant-slayer status, however, and showed propensity to become the top player he is destined to be last year when he made headlines after defeating Edinho Lewis, who was an integral part of a 2010 Senior Commonwealth Games team.
Britton beat Lewis at the National Sports Commission (NSC) Independence tournament before a singles win at Clash of the Champions. Those performances, along with his double-bronze medal feats at the Caribbean Junior Championships in Trinidad and Tobago and selection for last year’s South American Games in Peru was enough to earn Britton ‘Runner-Up Junior Sportsman of the Year’ to the athlete, Jason Yaw.
But where did the journey start for Britton? The member of the Malteenoes Sports Club admitted that he did not take the sport seriously until he returned from the Dominican Republic in 2011 as part of the Guyana Table Tennis Association (GTTA) Cadets team.
“I started playing at the age of nine at Mae’s School in my Physical Education class, but I did not take the game seriously until 2011 after returning from Dominican Republic,” he said, adding his Coach, Idi Lewis and family are keys to his continued success.
“The coaching methods of my Coach, Idi Lewis, support of my family and the advice from senior players such as Christopher Franklin along with the hard work Idi and I have put in over the last 18 months have led to my success,” he continued.
Britton, who was born on July 13, 1998, said that his motto is simply ‘work hard and win easy’ and despite the challenges of balancing school and practice, his work ethic is very good and he is getting the results from the long hours of table-time he has been investing.
“School limits my training days a lot but when I do get to train I put in as much work as possible. I train at the club on Mondays, Thursday and Saturdays and I play with Franklin and some other seniors on some Sunday mornings,” Britton informed during our interview.
Asked how he projects his future in the sport and academically, Britton said that his table tennis goals include him winning the Caribbean Championships, and representing Guyana at the 2016 Olympic Games; academically, he intends to become an Attorney-at-Law.
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