THE Guyana Table Tennis Association (GTTA) has named a strong team to represent the country in the table tennis competition of the multi-sport Inter-Guiana ‘Goodwill’ Games. Players are expected to begin group training from today as they prepare for the October 20-24 event in Guyana. The team, which comprises six core players and four backup players, includes Boys: Shemar Britton, Elishaba Johnson, Kyle Edghill, Miguel Wong, and Nicholas Romain, while on the distaff side there are Priscilla Greaves, Selenas Jackman, Nevaeh Clarkson, Davonna Best, and Aneka Phillips.
The team is largely made up of players who were selected for the event last year before that hosting of the Games was cancelled. Although the players have all been training individually with their respective clubs, national coach Linden Johnson said that the team will begin training collectively from today at the National Gymnasium.
Johnson hinted that training for the squad will be tough because all the players have pressing academic commitments. They also have to work with the availability schedule of the Gymnasium since other sporting disciplines will be using the facility in their preparations.
Johnson indicated that while the training will be tough for the players, they have all signalled their willingness to make the sacrifice to put in the work needed.
“The training will be effective from tomorrow. We had to work out the schedule for training because not only table tennis will be training for the Games so we had to make way for other sports also at Gymnasium.
“We will play from 17:00hrs. Some of our players are at school so they will come off sometimes at 20:30hrs, after lessons, and these players will train from about 21:00hrs to 23.00hrs. They are making the sacrifice to do the training,” Johnson said.
The Guyana team will compete with a team from Suriname at the Games, and rumour has it that Suriname is looking to field a fierce team. Johnson says the Guyana side will not be taking any chances and will be preparing as hard as ever.
“The Goodwill is just around the corner and we want to take no chances with Suriname; also they might be bringing players from Holland, so we have to get our strongest team. We’re going to be training every day.
It’s a pretty good team, we have a lot of confidence in them as a team. Even though they haven’t been training as a team as yet, they’ve all been doing their individual training, so we stand a good chance,” Johnson commented.
Apart from table tennis, teams from Guyana and Suriname will also compete in athletics, swimming, volleyball, futsal and basketball. Both athletics and swimming have already named their teams for the event. Athletics has a 28-member team while swimming has a 12-member team, as well as two reserves.