LAST year’s third-place finishers at the National Schools Championships, East Georgetown – District 12, are sending out the message to leading competitors District 11 and District 10, to watch out when the annual event begins next week.Like North Georgetown (District 11), who earlier this week boasted of having an improved team, with maximum athletes for all of the various sections of the multisport event, District 12 say they too will be walking with a full squad and will throw down the gauntlet against the top two districts at the Championships.
Speaking with Chronicle Sport, East GT District head, Marlon David said he’s not entertaining the idea of another third place finish this year.
“We’ll be gunning for either first or second place. (District 11 and District 10) have to watch out, I’ve already warned them,” David said with a laugh.
Of the four competitions that the 15 districts will compete in – swimming, athletics, cycling and teachers – David said his district’s strong points will be in the teachers and swimming divisions.
“This year’s competition is a competition that I’m looking forward to because we stand a chance. All of our teams are full, we are not short; so that’s why we stand a better chance than last year, because we did not have the full share last year. We didn’t have a full cycling or track and field last year. For the years gone by we have never had a complete teachers’ team, this year we have a full share of athletes for that team. In swimming also, we would have collected several champion swimmers including national swimmer Leon Seaton.”
With District 11 their strong areas are the athletics and the swimming. Upper Demerara/Kwakwani, however, have shown to be one of the most consistent districts in all of the competitions, finishing first place in athletics, while finishing second in the other three areas last year.
As it pertains to East’s athletics team, David disclosed that while there are a few choice athletes, this year’s team actually has a lot of new faces and that may stymy things somewhat. Nevertheless, he still remains optimistic of the district’s chances in that area.
“For the track and field we have some new faces, and we had a really hard time selecting the team because of that. They may not be known to the track and field fraternity, but we are again remaining hopeful of the fresh blood that we are bringing,” he remarked.