ALTHOUGH North Georgetown (District 11) will definitely be looking to shine for another year with a strong swimming team and an ample athletics team, it’s the cycling that will be the Achilles heel for them when they turn out to compete at the National Schools Cycling, Swimming and Track & Field Championships which will begin next week Monday in Georgetown.

Speaking with Chronicle Sport, District head Mark Wills confessed that it will be another trying year for the District, who have been struggling for some years now to overcome their arch rivals Upper Demerara/Kwakwani (District 10).
“We have a lot of work to do to put ourselves in that position where we can come out victorious,” Wills said.

Despite continuing to defend their title in the swimming competition, North Georgetown finished in second place behind the Linden District last year, largely due to an overall dismal performance in the track and field competition, which was won by District 10. Their cycling did nothing to alleviate the situation.

With not much hope on the cycling team again this year, the District would like to do as much damage as possible in the teachers’ competition to stay afloat against Linden, eager that this might even help lead them back to glory.
“The cycling is going to hit us hard and that’s one of our concerns. The thing is that they (District 10) have track and field and we have swimming, so we have to look at how we fare with them in the other two competitions. That’s what will determine who will win. So we have to try our best to put some distance between them and ourselves in the teachers’ competition, because Linden is known to have strong cyclists,” Wills explained.

North Georgetown will be fielding a team of 108, just two short of the maximum 110 persons allotted to each of the 15 districts competing at the Championships.
Wills shared that just like other Districts, his District also had a hard time putting together their team, but unlike some teams that struggle to make up their numbers, he struggled with narrowing his list down within the 110-person limit.

“It was extremely hard. There were a lot of students who just did one event so it was kind of stressful, because if we are to take everybody who got first in every event, we would have ended up with like 160. We had to check across to see who covered multiple events and try to multitask to reach that quota,” he noted.

The swimming team of course have their full complement with 18 swimmers, most of whom are national swimmers, with experience, so Wills is not at all worried about defending the District’s title in the swimming competition.
“I have confidence in the ability of our swimming team and we will defend our swimming title. The core of swimmers is there. Most of these persons are all in clubs and they are seasoned in their abilities,” he shared.

With 14 persons, the teachers’ team is two persons short of the full complement, but Wills is not too worried about this area either.
The athletics team, however, is another story. Last year was not a good year for the District, and Wills is hopeful to at least see an improvement from that.
“Saying we did badly is an understatement, we did horrible,” Wills declared.
“I think we finished sixth or seventh (in track and field competition). Maybe I think the athletes tend to get complacent in what they are doing, plus the other Districts are getting stronger.

“They are actually putting in the work, whereas our athletes go in knowing that they are in North and thinking they will just do well but other districts are putting in the work.
“Most of our athletes they have the natural talent, so we would normally implore of our athletes to find themselves in clubs.”
However, this is where the challenge comes, Wills says. He pointed out that quite a large number of senior secondary schools land within the North Georgetown District, and at most of these schools academics is the main focus, making it a struggle to get the students to take sports seriously.

“And it’s not that the district has not even tried mitigating measures. Wills noted that over the years efforts have even been made to bring the selected athletes together to train prior to going to Nationals. However, the support for the initiative was not there.
“It didn’t work out because just two or three persons turn up, because they just focus on the academics. They feel that the time they could be at practice training they could instead be out at lessons or focusing on their academics,” Wills pointed out.

“The same goes for the cyclists, and Wills reminded that at the end of the day, it’s all voluntary and nothing can be done to compel the athletes when they just don’t want to.
“We try to encourage them to join some clubs, but at the end of the day we can’t force them to do something that they don’t want to. There’s nothing we can do if at the end of the day they just focus on the academics,” he said.