– Linden coach believes Chantoba Bright could be used as prime example

IT’s no secret that when it comes to track and field in the Caribbean, Jamaica stands head and shoulder above the rest of the region, with the Bahamas and Trinidad and Tobago in the tow.

However, one award-winning local track and field coach, Johnny Gravesande, believes that with his athlete –Chantoba Bright– accepting a full scholarship to the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), it shows that Guyana is not that far behind and with more opportunities given for athletes to showcase their talents with their regional counterparts, the gap will be narrowed.

Bright, 18, departed Guyana last Wednesday and for the next four years she will compete on the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) circuit and academically, major in natural science.

Gravesande was behind Bright’s double-silver showing at the 2016 CARIFTA Games in the long and triple jumps, and since then, coaches from several US Universities came calling. However, he advised “I told her no, I need her to reach 18, then she’ll be going; that way, she’ll do one year as a junior athlete in Guyana and then she’ll be old enough to take care of herself without her mother; so seeing her off to college and a division one college, it makes me feel proud as a coach.”

“I feel real proud as a coach that I have an athlete that overseas coaches are interested in because some people say that Guyana don’t have a lot of good athletes like the rest of the Caribbean or like Jamaica. So when I’m home and I see so many emails coming in and coaches showing interest, I know that I’m doing well and my athletes, she’s going great also,” the usually laid back Gravesande told Chronicle Sport in an exclusive interview.

Bright, a former student of the Mackenzie High School (MHS) in Linden, could boast of being the best in the Caribbean in the long and triple jump, since her resumé would reflect her outstanding performances at the many regional championships, including her dominance at the CARIFTA Games.

The Victory Valley, Linden resident, at the 2016 CARIFTA Games, won silver in the triple and the long jump. In 2017, she won gold in the long jump and bronze in the triple jump. In 2018, she won gold in the long jump, bronze in the triple jump and silver in the 4×400 relay.

At the IAAF World U-18 Championships last year in Kenya, she finished fifth, while at the South American U-20 Championships, she won gold in the long jump and bronze in the triple jump.

Her personal best in the triple jump is 12.60 and in the long jump, 6.30. She also dabbled in high jump where her best height cleared was 1.65 metres.

“A lot of colleges reached out to her, really good ones too, but I left the decision on where she wants to go with her mother, because when Chantoba leaves Guyana, she’ll be working with her mom and whoever is the new coach. I mean, yea, she’ll be working with me, but her mother is the one who need to be comfortable with where she’s going because this is a female athlete, not a male, so I gave the mother the option to choose the college with her daughter,” Gravesande explained when asked about the athlete attending UTEP.

According to Gravesande, “when I met her, she [was] already an A student at Mackenzie High School, but she wasn’t doing so well in athletics because she didn’t had a personal coach. She wasn’t doing so well in the track and her school coach told her to try the long and triple jump and from then we started working together.”

Meanwhile, for Gravesande, who also coaches Guyana’s 2017 IAAF U-18, 400 metres silver medallist Daniel Williams, Bright could be used as the perfect example of how to balance track and field and education, pointing to her success at the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examination and the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE).