Director of Sport, Christopher Jones along with the National Sports Commission (NSC) will be kicking things off for the New Year with the introduction of a nationwide coaching programme.
Director of Sport Christopher Jones
In an exclusive interview with Guyana Times Sport, the director noted that this was all a part of the annual aims he had set out upon assuming office back in 2015.
Firstly, Jones highlighted the achievements of the previous years, stating that he has fulfilled his personal promise to successfully host the Inter-Guiana Games as well as roll in the first ever national athlete database which is being constructed by local technology company, Intellectstorm.
Now in 2017 the process of gathering records of athletes beginning from the Primary level will start taking shape as the NSC initiates its coaching programme across all 15 districts of the country in close to 10 Olympic sport disciplines.
But this did not come as an abrupt decision, rather, the Director of Sport explained that “essentially what we did in 2016 were some assessments on the roles and functions our coaches and organizers have been carrying out throughout the years and we recognized that even though they would have reached a certain amount of our populace, it wasn’t sufficient and it doesn’t necessarily provide a road map to produce athletes so in 2017 the role of the coaches and organizers will be through the district structure. You would notice that the Guyana Teacher’s Union has a district structure that speaks to all 10 administrative Regions, a similar structure the NSC will be using.
We have now assigned our coaches and organizers to the 15 districts. So when I speak to you about coaching in Region Six which has two districts, five and 15, is that my coaches and organizers are reaching 8,500 primary school students and 5,500 secondary school students.”
Jones went on to explain how this programme will fan out, bearing in mind the fact that it is a lot of work and a lot of schools to cover, but no better time than to begin that in this month.
“As early as next week there are programmes in these districts, they will huddle schools, so for example they be working with three schools per hour and this will continue throughout the entire day. So the programmes will be running for the entire week for the entire region, touching every primary and secondary school,” Jones stated.
Additionally, “Every sport organizer and coach interacting in these districts, they will have to provide data for each and every single student they interact with and they will do their own assessment sheet to tell us these individuals have the potential for basketball, cricket, football or whatever sport it is, so at the end of every school term we will be producing a record sheet which will be speaking to districts that we have the potential, we have 75 students for the potential in cricket, we have 50 with potential for football, their names, date of births, addresses, all that will be fed into the data base so we have all the information.”
This will also help to assess the awarding of funding to travel overseas by various associations, based on their merits then they will be awarded.
Unfortunately the programme will not be targeting all the sporting disciplines but rather a hand full which the Director of Sport feels is what can be handled at the present time and which is realistically feasible.
“We recognize that there are 41 sports disciplines and we cannot carry all these disciplines and of course we have to target those that are Olympic sports so we would have narrowed down to a figure, which is not completed yet, but just under 10 sports disciplines that we would be carrying and these are the same disciplines the organizers and coaches will be teaching to the primary and secondary school students” the Director of Sport articulated.
This is what the NSC boss termed as “creating a feeder programme” explaining that “it starts from the very small schools so by the time they reach in secondary they can be channeled in to the various Associations.”
