Makeda Harding leads Guyana women’s hockey team to Junior Pan Am Championships

The Guyana Under-21 women’s hockey team is scheduled to compete in the 2023 Junior Pan American Championships, scheduled for 10–18 April in Bridgetown, Barbados. This will be the first-ever junior women’s team to represent the country in any competition.
Seven junior women’s teams will be participating in this competition, which is a qualifier for the 2023 Junior World Cup, to be held in Santiago, Chile in December.
While there is no official ranking for junior teams, Guyana’s women’s team is ranked #72 in the world. In these Championships, the Guyanese girls come up against Chile (#14), Canada (#15) and Barbados (#41). The other pool in the competition features Argentina (#2), USA (#16) and Uruguay (#25).
While the Guyanese squad features a few experienced players in Captain Makeda Harding, Sarah Klautky, Clayza Bobb, Kirsten Gomes, Abosaide Cadogan and Madison Fernandes, the rest of the squad is new to international competition, and most would be seeing a hockey artificial grass field for the first time in their lives.

The players have been robbed of a full calendar of competition for the last few years, as the COVID pandemic had interrupted the usual hockey calendar of local events. And while the players have been committed to the preparation programme, the unfortunate weather early in the year had rendered most fields unusable and had forced the players indoors at the National Gymnasium for training.
According to coach Philip Fernandes, these conditions were far from optimal, and have placed a further strain on the country’s ability to produce successful teams.
Fernandes has expressed disappointment that, after more than 20 years of making request, the Federation is no closer to securing an artificial surface for hockey, which all other teams in the Pan American Federation have.
“While all other teams consistently train on full-sized artificial surfaces year-round, just because these players are born in Guyana, they have to make do with thick grass fields, which are often unavailable; a reduced-size Gymnasium; a small, basketball court-size, carpeted surface; or the once-per-week National Stadium training.” Fernandes has said. “Our players deserve better than this! And I am hopeful that, some day, the commitment and passion of our players will be rewarded with suitable facilities that can enable greater success.”
When asked about the Providence artificial football field, Fernandes indicated that while the field would be ideal, the GFF had indicated a fear of their warranty being voided, and therefore they could not allow hockey to train there.
There are no easy matches in this competition, as Guyana is the lowest-ranked team in the competition, the only team making its international debut, and the only team featuring players who have never played the game on an artificial surface.
Fernandes indicated that while expectations are modest, the team has to start somewhere, and if competition comes as close as Barbados and our players don’t participate, they will never gain the experience needed to be competitive in the future.
Guyana’s girls will face Canada in their very first match on Tuesday 11th April at 11:00am. They face hosts Barbados the following afternoon at 1:30pm, and complete their pool-round matches against Chile on Friday April 14th at 12:00 noon. The tournament will then go to crossovers with the other pool, with the finals being played on Tuesday 18th April at 3:30pm.