THE Guyana Amateur Boxing Association’s (GABA) 2010 National Novices Championships will box-off tomorrow night at the National Gymnasium, Mandela Avenue, from 19:00 h. According to tournament organiser and former national light heavyweight amateur champion, Terrence Poole, nine boxing gyms from across the country are expected to field representatives and some 70 to 80 pugilists are expected to contest the 11 weight divisions.
The gyms expected to be represented are: Guyana Defence Force, Republican, Forgotten Youth Foundation, and Harpy Eagles of Georgetown; Ricola of East Bank Demerara, Young Warriors of Linden, Timehri Warriors of Soesdyke, Port Kaituma of Region 1 and Pockets Rockets of Berbice.
The tournament, which will culminate on Sunday evening at the same venue with the final of each of the 11 divisions, is being sponsored by Demerara Distillers Limited, the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport and GABA’s vice-president Maurice Rajkumar.
Poole told Chronicle Sport he anticipates the tournament will be an exciting one that will feature new finds for the association.
“At the moment, amateur boxing is on the rise in Guyana. The association has been organising lots of out-reach programmes that have seen new faces emerging and these same new faces will feature in this year’s novices championships.”
Poole said the GABA has its hands full this year as there are a number of regional and international tournaments “and the association will be sending teams of boxers to all those tournaments since the idea of the newly elected executive is to keep the boxers actively involved in the sport and away from society’s ills.”
He said the GABA plans to send an eight-member team to the Inaugural Trinidad and Tobago Games which is set for May 3-10.
According to Poole, the Trinidad Games will see competition in five disciplines and amateur boxing is one of those disciplines.
The veteran amateur boxer said Guyana will be represented in eight weight divisions: (junior flyweight, flyweight, bantamweight, featherweight, lightweight, junior welterweight, middleweight and light heavyweight), at the Trinidad and Tobago Games which will see other South American and Caribbean countries being represented.
Asked why the GABA would not be sending a welterweight fighter, Poole said at the moment, there is no suitable welterweight boxer for that level of competition since the last best fighter in that division (Devon Boatswain) has moved on to the middleweight division.
Poole is hopeful however, that Boatswain will come back down to the welterweight division before the Central American and Commonwealth Games (CAC) in Puerto Rico in July of this year.
According to Poole, the GABA is looking to send a seven-man team to the CAC Games, but this depends on the amount of assistance the association gets from the Guyana Olympic Association (GOA).
The next major event for amateur boxing is the 2010 Commonwealth Games which will be held in Delhi, India, in October.