NATIONAL  coach Linden Johnson says that preparations are coming along well for the team of young table tennis  players who are expected to travel to The Dominican Republic to represent Guyana at the annual Caribbean Mini-Cadet (U-11) and pre-Cadet (U-13) Table Tennis Championship that will run from August 26 – 31.

The players are expected to leave Guyana next week, even as they continue to try to solicit financial support to ensure that the entire team makes it to the event.

The 17 players have been training twice a day, five days a week and once on Saturday under the tutelage of a battery of coaches including Colin France, Michael Kellman, Candacy McKenzie, Chelsea Edgehill, and Sidney Christoff.

“Preparations are fairly ok so far. They’re training twice a day: 9am – 11am, and 3pm – 5pm, that’s from Monday to Friday. We also play on Saturdays from 10am – 12pm,” Johnson related.

“We expect a lot from the players. We’re looking especially in the boys under-13; they are experienced players. We’re hoping for medals in the Under-13s.

In the Under-13 girls, we’ve two experienced players. We’ve some strong under-11 boys in Wong and DeAbreu but the under-11 team is a fairly young team; most of the players are still under 9, but we’re hoping that they put their best foot forward.”

The team is being led by CARIBBEAN Cadet champion Kaysan Ninvalle and 2017 ITTF Caribbean World Hopes qualifier selectee, Krystian Sahadeo, in the boys’ under-13 category, where there is also Jonathan van Lange and Christopher Barrow.

In the Girls’ 13-and-under category, there is Nkechi McCrae; 2016 Caribbean bronze medallist Thuraia Thomas, along with Tatyanna Mohamed and Roseanna Sanders.

The Boys’ 11 years-and-under category includes the talented Dhanesh Persaud, Colin Wong, Alexander DeAbreu and Malachi Moore. The Girls’ 11-and-under category includes new and emerging talents – Jasmine Bilingi, Akera Watson, Rachel Sanders, Daji Dots and Samara Sukhai.

According to Johnson, the coaches are focussing mainly on the serves as they use these last weeks.

“One of the things we’re working on mostly is the serve and return of serve, because we’ve found that that’s one of the area where we’ve had major concern. So we’re getting stronger on the serves,” Johnson said.

The players have been a part of a fitness and technique-focus camp for the past month or so.

Technically, they had to come to the camp that focussed on fitness and technique, but I think basically we’ve put ourselves together.