… present running shoes to top athletes

MACKENZIE High School (MHS) students Daniel Williams and Deshanna Skeete, the two athletes adjudged the most outstanding at the recent Upper Demerara/Kwakwani Inter-School Championships, yesterday were recipients of a pair of cleats and the Champion ‘Boy’ and ‘Girl’ trophies, compliments of Ronald Grogan and Linden ‘Sancho’ Alphonso.
Williams is the 2017 IAAF World U-18 World Championships 400m silver medallist, while Skeete won gold at this year’s South American Youth Games 400m.

“We have a vested interest in the youths in our community,” Grogan told Chronicle Sport yesterday. “We don’t believe in the idea of just giving back, we believe that if youths are equipped with the proper tools, they’ll have the ability to do well.”
Both Alphonso and Grogan hail from the Victory Valley area in Linden, a community referred to as the ‘Ghetto’, and it is on those bases that the pair believe that it’s imperative to support student-athletes in order for them to succeed.

“We came out of the Victory Valley and when you come from the ‘Valley’, the sky’s the limit. I’m not sure how much people know about that area, but, once you can come out of the ‘Valley’ and make it, you can make it anywhere.
“So that’s why we started to assist in whatever way we could in order for these athletes to become successful in whatever they do,” Grogan said.
Support for the Pocket Rocket Boxing Gym, as well as the sponsoring of Harmony Secondary’s top graduating student and hosting one of Linden’s premier schools basketball tournament are just some of charitable work done by Alphonso and Grogan, who are cousins.

Alphonso is no stranger to sports in Guyana, more so basketball, since he was the first and only national coach to bring home a Caribbean Championship, having been the head coach for the National Women’s team which won the CARICOM Women’s Basketball title in 1996 in Trinidad and Tobago.