Ten recently International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) accredited Guyanese umpires departed Guyana on October 6, 2016 overland to Suriname to officiate in the First Dutch Colony Table Tennis championships scheduled for October 7 and 8 in Paramaribo, Suriname.
The team of consist of; Ryan Narine, Shavin Greene, Debra Bacchus, Xenophiah, Maurice Cummings, Candacy Mc Kenzie, Raynor Hilary Anderson, Waren Hackshaw and Leona Kyte.
The tournament will be played between Suriname, Curacao, Aruba, and Bonaire in team singles, doubles and mixed doubles events to determine who would be the best in among the former Dutch colonies.
According to President of the Suriname Table Tennis Association Desire Hooghart, the tournament will become an annual feature hosted on a rotational basis aimed at further developing the sport in the former Dutch colonies.
In an unprecedented first for Guyana, recently certified under the ITTF basic Umpire and Referee training programme conducted by Silvia Garro will form the nucleus of officials who will officiate in the competition.
Recently ITTF accredited Guyanese Umpires prior to their departure for Suriname
Symbolic in that this provides an opportunity for the umpires to further harness their skills moving along a path of becoming International umpires. The engagement will truly serve to enhance and improve the tournament coordination capacity in Guyana.
Further, the presence of theses umpires are key to Guyana presenting a good representation at this forum which is critical to paving the way for more umpires to be selected from Guyana for future international engagements by the ITTF.
The Guyana Table Tennis Association (GTTA) sees tournament coordination and umpiring as key pillars upon which the sport must be built and made representation to the ITTF to host an Umpires and referees workshop earlier this year to increase the amount of persons with tournament coordination and umpiring skills.
The competition is well and truly on the way and from all reports the Guyanese are doing a splendid job.
Later in the year, the GTTA will be sending representatives to a Competition Manager programme organized by the ITTF which will be conducted in Barbados. The programme is scheduled for December 2016.
