HEAD of the Guyana Hockey Board Phillip Fernandes has described the just concluded 20th edition of the Diamond Mineral Water International Hockey Festival as one of the best.
Fernandes who has represented Guyana in the sport at junior and senior level before transitioning to administration has seen all 20 editions of the competition.
“First, we were a little bit worried because there was a lot of enthusiasm initially and then was a bit of drop off but we still had teams coming and they were contacting us and it turns out we had a really good festival. The crowd support was great and we think in terms of the quality of hockey, it was fantastic finals, the men’s final, the women’s finals and even the overaged groups,” the GHB boss said.
The administrator says Pepsi Hikers is one of the best teams in the region.
“Hikers bring to Guyana a special brand of hockey, and not to get into too much details but it started with Timothy McIntosh, who learnt a bit of his hockey from Germany and brought a style of hockey to Guyana that was different to anything we would have had. Hikers as team has been able to continue that and it shows in record, they are the winning-est team in the festival, it shows in their performance that in the region, they are definitely one of the top clubs”
He says they are taking a hard look at the festival with a view to expanding beyond the teams that have traditionally played in the competition.
“The next step for us is to trying get teams from even further afield. We have gotten teams from the Caribbean, we have gotten teams from North America and we continue to get those but we need to now add flavor of Europe perhaps maybe even Oceana, they are teams from Australia and so on that have been getting more involved in indoor hockey and travelling more often and we are trying to reach out to those. We have made contact with folks in Europe and so on trying to get a little bit and I think there is some promising signs and that is the next step,” he added.
In the competition Pepsi Hikers claimed their 10th title by defeating Trinidad and Tobago Police Squad 7-2 while T&T Masters needed a penalty shoot to overcome GCC Vintage in the Masters over 50 category.
The over 40 Master’s final saw Hikers beating GCC the sequel 4-3 while in a historic first, Saints captured their maiden women open title beating multiple times champions GBTI GCC.