The Guyana Volleyball Federation (GVF) is about to shift straight into third gear with the number of activities ongoing and scheduled to happen in the near future.
Recently back from South American Congress in Brazil, president of the federation, John Flores seems on a mission to flood the local
Members of the newly installed Essequibo Volleyball Association
sport landscape with volleyball activities and to push for the further development of local volleyball.
As a part of his strategy to spread the game throughout the entire country, Flores was instrumental in the resuscitation of volleyball in Essequibo where he himself travelled to in order to ensure that they create an executive body who will overlook and push the development of volleyball in that county.
The newly elected Essequibo Volleyball Association executives, who gave Flores a commitment to work hard for their term in office, has also given themselves a mandate to make Beach Volleyball one of their central focuses as they move the game forward in their association.
The executive body, which was installed on Saturday last at the Annual General Meeting, which was held at the Anna Regina court room and was attended by functional clubs from Mainstay, Lima Sands, Queenstown and the Police Sports Club of Anna Regina, saw the installation of Imran Baksh as President, Andrew Carter as Vice-president, Sergeant Clarke as the Treasurer, Randy Bridgemohan as the Assistant Secretary/Treasurer and Marsha Williams as the Secretary.
Speaking at the installation of the new executive, Flores expressed his satisfaction with the fact that the new executive took the time to pledge their support to volleyball as he outlined that it will require dedication and hard work. Flores also pledged the support of the Federation towards the development of the game in Essequibo as he urged them to spread the game as much as possible.
Taking the game to the international scene, Flores has also committed to the preparation and participation of male and female Under-19 and Under-23 teams to represent Guyana at the upcoming South American Championships, which is slated to begin in June of this year.
Expressing his pleasure with the work currently being done by the Berbice and Demerara Associations, especially in the area of youth and school volleyball, the GVF head related that those programmes will work perfectly to feed the national teams, which are expected to commence training shortly.
Busy period
Under the guidance of national head coach Levi Nedd, who has the responsibility of implementing and ensuring the execution of training programmes for national teams at all levels, the federation has declared that on May 7, they intend to run off the first leg of trials for the selection of players for the junior teams to participate in the South American Games.
The GVF’s Inter-county School Championship, which will run off on May 7 at the National Gymnasium, will be used as the first phase of the selection process, in which national selectors will use the opportunity to identify children from the school system who have the necessary skill level to be shortlisted for the national team.
Upon conclusion of the School tournament, Nedd and his selectors will turn their focus to all the other available players to determine the full complement of players, who will immediately commence preparation for the upcoming games.
The Under-23 male tournament is the first to serve off in Cartagena, Colombia, between June 18 and 23 and Nedd has already indicated that his primary focus after shortlisting the players for the various games, will be the preparation of the Under-23 men team, which he seems extremely upbeat about.
Expressing his anticipation and expectations from the Under-23 men’s team, Nedd explained that more than half of the senior national men team that performed credibly at the Senior games held in Brazil last year will be eligible for selection to this team.
He went on the point out that seeing that Guyana was able to match up reasonably against the top senior players in the confederation, it won’t be beyond his expectation for this team to return some hardware from our first-ever outing at this level.
Notably eligible for the Under-23 team selection are national star player, Creston Rodney, who was the most outstanding local player in Brazil last year and is currently representing Glamorgan Volleyball Club in the Trinidad and Tobago senior club league; stand out performer, Vance Harding, who turned in outstanding performance in most of his first national outing, most notably against the Colombian men outfit; and Trevon McRae, who proved his worth as he matched up almost equally with some of the best senior middle attackers in South America.
Also on the international calendar for later this year, Flores informed that he will be taking teams to Boa Vista, Brazil, to represent Guyana at the Border Games and that will be an ideal opportunity for local teams to begin preparation for the Tradewind Tankers International Tournament, which has become the marquee event on the local volleyball calendar. The Tradewind Tankers is scheduled for November as has become customary for local volleyball.
