By Stephan Sookram
With more focus being placed on sport in schools and getting more children involved in sport, one discipline has devised a clever way to draw in new talent and promote their sport while not hurting the system.

The Guyana Baseball League (GBL), under the stewardship of current president Robin Singh, has successfully devised a two-fold way to ensure that the sport system is reinvigorated in schools while talent searching among students continues.
Singh, speaking to Chronicle Sport contended that by using a pilot school, Berbice High School, and incorporating the sport at the grass root level into the curriculum, they have been able to successfully blend sport and education while unearthing talent.
“Getting sport back into school our way has been the physical education examination,” contended Singh.
When baseball was being spread throughout Guyana, they (the GBL) had opted to use the Physical Education subject as a means of transmitting it, with Berbice Schools showing the most enthusiasm, hence Berbice High as the pilot project.
The school which has been involved with the sport for the second year running this year, has been utilizing the sport as part of their Caribbean Examinations Council’s (CXC) Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC).

Getting sport back into school, our way has been the physical education examination”- Robin Singh, Guyana Baseball League President

“When we lobbied CSEC to have baseball as one of the option sports on Physical Education (PE), we got it on the first year so that It could have been used as a demonstration sport, that’s last year (2015), and we had 30 students sit very successfully. This year, 34 are going to use baseball,” said Singh.
At the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE) level, Singh says that four persons are utilising it as part of their exams, while as it relates to fourth formers, they pilot school has over thirty and at the third form level close to one hundred children have expressed an interest.
“Basically for this year’s exam, once a week I’m taking the guys up from Georgetown to let them see how it’s done in Berbice,” added the GBL Boss.
Meanwhile, the relevant stakeholders have sat up and taken note of the GBL’s advancements with Singh confessing that the National Sports Commission (NSC) has offered to assist with three more pilot programmes in the ancient county.
According to Singh, “they have liked the pilot program and are going to support three other programs, so we are going to expand from one school to four. I’ve got a couple primary schools in Berbice again who are interested. We’re growing slowly.”
On the aspect of coaching, Singh said, “It’ll take about three months or twelve sessions to deliver baseball to a new coach starting from ground zero, who has no idea what the game is. It’s a very complex game.”

The pilot project has worked well; we have taken a school and been able to get the sport on the curriculum legitimately” – Guyana Baseball League President

Nonetheless, he has Georgetown on the body’s strategic plans with an eye to employing the same Berbice methods in the Garden City.
“The pilot project has worked well; we have taken a school and been able to get the sport on the curriculum legitimately,” he concluded.