CHRISTIANBURG/WISMAR Secondary School’s track coach, Moses Pantlitz, is hopeful of his athletes breaking back into the CARIFTA Games team when the first of the Athletics Association of Guyana’s (AAG) trials takes place this weekend.
The first set of trials will take place at the National Track and Field Centre (NTFC) on Saturday and is to select the Guyana team that will represent Guyana at this year’s annual Easter Weekend Games.
Speaking to the coach whose athletes are now using the newly laid Linden Synthetic Track for training at Bayrock in Wismar, Pantlitz told Guyana Chronicle that, “The athletes have been adapting fairly well towards the sessions on the track and the facility is definitely a plus. This is a similar facility to that which will be used for the trials at Leonora, so training on one like that will allow you a way to getting the same set of turns, the same lengths on the straights and these things which are carefully measured; and while we are having a little breeze, it is not as much as at Leonora; but we have a reasonable breeze in the afternoon and that can help to get you up to where you want to be.”
The experienced youth coach, who doubled with Johnny Gravesande to produce the top district in the annual National Schools Track and Field Championship, also explained the move from grass to tarmac.
“I am a coach who knows how to make the adjustments for athletes, and using that to get the timings up because we know that grass things are different to track timings. So that is among the basic things that I am working on to get the timings where it is supposed to be,” Coach Pantlitz added.
He said, “Presently, I would have loved if the inner field at the Linden Synthetic Track was prepared properly, so that we could have done some work there at least two times a week, as we are without our own ground facility.”
Looking forward to the two upcoming trials, he posited, “ I am making a big comeback because I was out of getting someone from the club to attend CARIFTA Games for the past three years. But my expectations are with my female high jumper Ms. Jarissa McRae, who I have been working feverishly with for the last three months, along with my distance athletes Ms. Akelah Bloucher and Mr. Timothy Smith. They are all competing in the Under 17 categories and I have a real uphill task [but I think] that they can put themselves up in a position to be selected “
However, Pantlitz stated that the best performance could come in the 800m and 100 m Girls Under-17 races with Ms. Bloucher.
His concerns heading into this weekend’s event were, “we know that the Guyana trials is a very steep one, where the qualifying standard is sometimes; you wish you are living in another country where the standards are very low, but again it is a task ahead and we are working towards that.”
