GFF Girls Academy camp launched to focus on developing local players

The Guyana Football Federation (GFF) on Tuesday morning re-launched the Guyana Girls Academy (GGA) and launched the GGA Football Camp as well.
The founder of the GGA, US-based Guyanese Coach Colin Wilson, who is also the facilitator of the Football Camp, at the launch, noted that the Camp was designed to “develop, train and educate girls to compete on a collegiate, professional and international level as well as to ignite a strong culture of women’s football here (in Guyana) while continuously fuelling the Women’s National team programme”.

He pointed out that the ultimate goal of the GGA was to “start off with younger girls and build from there, to get as many girls as possible so as to create as big as possible of a player pool for Guyana, so that they can compete at the highest levels in the future”.
Meanwhile, GFF Technical Director Ian Greenwood, who was present at the launch, pointed out that while women’s football in Guyana was at least “20 years behind where it should be”, the GGA would work in tandem with the GFF’s plan for the development of local female players.
“This initiative by Coach Wilson is a great one for the younger players that we have. We know we have to get a lot more local girls into our national teams over the next few years; pre-dominantly we know that it (Women’s National Team) has been mainly overseas-based due to the quality we get from overseas. We need to develop local players ourselves and this has to start at the ages of 5, 6,7, so this initiative will be following the GFF technical development plan and will be helping to develop young girls into footballers down the years. The collaboration between the two entities (GFF and GGA) will be very positive,” Greenwood maintained.
GFF President Wayne Forde thanked Coach Wilson for lending his expertise, experience, knowledge and time to the girls who would be taking part in the camp as he stressed that it would benefit Guyana profusely in the future.
He also pointed out that development required a lot of investment and discipline, noting the recent appointment of Women’s Development Officer Tricia Munroe as one such example.
“I assure Mr Wilson that next year when he gets back here, he will be conducting his clinic on a GFF facility,” Forde announced.
The four-day camp will begin today from 09:30h to 17:00h, and will continue until July 29. Some 50 young ladies between the ages of 7 and 11 are expected to participate in the camp.