US-based former Guyanese athletic coach, Mark Webster, who organised the Guyanese team of Fort Wellington athletes that recently participated in the Penn State Relays, says that irrespective of struggles faced he still has plans to continue taking teams to the Relays. Webster said despite the initial unenthusiastic support from other clubs to take up the offer to participate at the event, he is still hopeful of the day when he can see a plethora of Guyanese athletes at the event.
And possibly with the support shown for the Fort Wellington team, other teams can now feel encouraged to come on board with the initiative.
“The goal is to have teams from Corentyne right up to Linden, once they meet the criteria, go up and compete because that’s how it’s been done throughout the United States, the Caribbean, Africa, Europe, Canada, schools, colleges, they’re all going up to compete, so why not Guyana?” Webster said during a press briefing yesterday.
It was a few weeks ago that news broke of the relatively unknown clan of 15 athletes from Fort Wellington, West Coast Berbice, travelling to the US to participate at the annual Penn State Relay in the US.
It all began when Webster and fellow former Guyanese athlete, Tanya Barry, approached clubs in Guyana to attend the event over a year ago, but were not given much support, Fort Wellington being the only club that took his offer seriously.
With a team secured, the next challenge for the team was securing the financing, overlooking a budget of over $4 million. Though funding was solicited from the Government, none was forthcoming. However, that did nothing to dampen the spirits of the Fort Wellington team, and on 27 April they arrived in the US to participate at the April 28 – 30 Relays.
Next, the team faced the challenge of having to participate the very next day after they arrived, in a climate they were not completely prepared for.
“The very next day [after they arrived in the US] they had to compete and this is when things started to get hectic, because of the change in climate, the cold was a bit too much. We’d had some cramping issues with some of the athletes, and that sort of hindered the progress a bit, but when they quickly realised how serious it is, they started to dress warmer and get serious,” Mark explained.
The female side was disappointed when the team of Denita Jackson, Amesha Theusday, Amela Theusday and Allesia Grant were disqualified from the Girls’ 4x100m, while the 4x400m team did not finish their event.
The boys’ side came third in the high school boys’ 4x100m, but won their 4x400m heats in a time of 3:26.95s.
Despite not making it into the finals, the potential of the athletes has been noted and an elated Webster shared that at least seven of the athletes have been marked as potential scholarship awardees, pending completion of their secondary school exams.