PM Mark Phillips opens inaugural Sports Conference

Oct 03, 2021 Sports

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Sport Academy to be launched in two weeks

Kaieteur News – Yesterday, at the National Cultural Centre, Guyana’s Prime Minister Hon. Brigader (Ret’d) Mark Phillips officially opened the first ever Sports Conference in the 55-year history of Guyana.

The conference which was organised by the Ministry of Culture, Youth & Sport, began at 8:30am and ended just after 3pm and was divided in three segments.
The retired Military Officer informed the gathering which included heads of the 12 Associations, Boards, Federations and the Guyana Rugby Football Union, Government Officials, the Director of Sport, Chairman of the National Sports Commission, special invitees and the media, that he was honoured to share the historic moment with them.
Prime Minister Phillips promised Government’s contribution in as much ways that it can.
“The government has made it possible for more sporting activities to be held since we know how important sports is to Guyana. Our budget for sports is the largest ever in the history of Guyana,” said the Prime Minister.
He spoke about the Stadiums being built at Albion in Corentyne Berbice, Linden in Region 10 and at Anna Regina on the Essequibo Coast and added that the National Stadium at Providence will become a multi-purpose facility with the construction of Volleyball, Basketball and Lawn Tennis Courts in addition to a football field to the north of the compound before you enter the Stadium.
“We are rehabilitating the Colgrain Swimming Pool just behind my office,” noted the PM who stressed that Sports was a very big business.

Minister Ramson said that those present were witnessing history being made for the future of Guyana’s sports development and spoke about the concept for sports Academy which he said will be launched in the next two weeks.
“The Sports Academy is not a building, it’s a programme which will be run by the NSC in collaboration with the 12 Associations who will receive one million dollars each to stage tournaments,” stated the Sports Minister.
He explained that other Sports disciplines will be added to the list of core sports in the future while saying a sport discipline may be far ahead of the others but the aim of this programme is to produce improved quality teams and professionally run Associations.
The main aim of Coaches at the formative level is to identify sports person’s talent or natural skill and teach them how to improve on that talent by constantly practicing it.
“What is talent?” asked the Minister, who said when you ask most people what is talent they say it’s something you are born with (God given gift).
But according to the 36-year-old Minister who took up a Chevening Scholarship to pursue a Msc degree in oil and gas enterprise management in the UKin 2016, he also thought that talent was ‘God given’ but changed his view on talent during that scholarship programme.
“I was the worst possible batsman… my best scoring stoke was off the edge to third man. But I read a book about talent and I worked on what I had read for six months.
I scored a century in a Lawyers game and batting at number three for my University in England,” said the Minister who was a decent left arm spinner at first division level for Everest.
Minister Ramson is correct when he says that talent could be learned. However, in some cases talent is natural born.
A talent (or gift, or aptitude) is the skill that someone has to do something very well that people usually like and that is difficult.
“We have to develop talent which is a skill by practicing. The more you do it the better you will get,” said Minister Ramson who said many times coaches look for someone who is tall to play a sport like basketball and of a particular size to play in the NFL.
He gave examples of some players not fitting that criteria being the best in their sports.
Minister Ramson explained that the Sports Academy is three-tier; Nursery (12-25), Tournaments and Elite, while the training camp in the Academy will run for 4-8 weeks.
The tournaments will show if the players graduate to the elite group who be paid a stipend to focus on their respective sports exclusively, training all day…morning, afternoons and evenings each day.
Minister Ramson said that the elite athletes will need elite Coaches and in addition to the certified Coaches and we (the NSC/respective Associations) could use former players or overseas coaches.
He said that this programme can only be successful if all work together as one since many hands make light work.
“Many hands rowing together will take us where we want go faster,” posited Ramson, who informed that all of his Ministry’s projects will be completed this year.
After the ‘Coffee break’ four ‘closed door’ sessions were held with Newsroom’s Akeem Greene being the moderators for topic 1, Governance/Responsibilities, nurturing talent and mind-set.
Athletics (Aubrey Hutson), Cricket (Bissoondyal Singh), Squash (David Fernandes) & NSC (chairman Kashif Muhammad) attended the first session.
The second session dealt with Revenue, Sponsorship & Media and the Moderator was NCN’s Rawle Tony and Basketball (Mike Singh), Hockey (Phillip Fernandes), Volleyball (Levi Nedd) & NSC (Chateram Ramdial) attended.
After a break for lunch, the third session was held with the Newsroom’s Avinash Ramzan being the moderator discussing Nutrition, Injuries & Psychology.
Present were Football (Wayne Forde), Rugby (Godfrey Brooms), Tennis (Cristy Campbell) & NSC (commissioner Dellon Davidson).
In the final session dealt with Tournaments, Elite Training & International competitions and had Kaieteur News’s Frankie Wilson as the Moderator.
Those in attendance were (Godfrey Munroe-Table Tennis), (Emilia Ramdhani-Badminton), (Dwayne Scott-Swimming) & (NSC’s Director of Sport Steve Ninvalle).
Each session lasted 45 minutes. (Sean Devers)

 

 

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