UG Sports Unit’s Annual Sports Awards & Dinner 2024-UG TO OFFER PROGRAMME IN SPORTS COACHING/MANAGEMENT

-as outstanding achievements are recognized and celebrated

The University of Guyana (UG) Sports Unit on Thursday recognized the performances of student-athletes in 2024 in their Annual Sports Awards and Dinner held at the Education Lecture Theatre (ELT) of the Turkeyen Campus.
Student-athletes were celebrated for outstanding performances in basketball and in track and field, and it was remembered that the UG Basketball Team had placed second in the Tertiary Basketball Tournament played locally, and had performed creditably in the Trinidad Basketball Honor Competition.
Student-athletes were also awarded for outstanding performances in track and field competitions.

While delivering remarks, President of the Guyana Tennis Association, Christy Campbell, declared that the University of Guyana is heading in the right direction to create balanced individuals, and that an MOU with the GOA is set to create opportunities for athletes and coaches.
“Memorandum of Understanding was established in 2023 between the Guyana Olympic Association and UG to create more opportunities for athletes and coaches both on and off campus. Consultations were also held with key stakeholders to frame a sports policy. In addition, UG has also collaborated with corporate banks to enhance the sports facilities on campus,” Campbell recalled.
“This approach demonstrates that UG is headed in the direction of acknowledging the performance of balanced individuals in society. Of course, your primary goal as a student of this institution is academic achievement, and I fully endorse that position. However, please allow me to highlight a few opportunities that can be derived from combining sports and academic studies,” she declared.
Campbell went on to divulge the importance of Faculty versus students to create networking on campus; and detailed how barriers to communication can be broken and how skills sets can be inherited from sports that cannot be inherited from the classroom structure.
“A lot of academics live relatively sedentary lifestyles, which could shape the onset of several chronic health issues. So, it’s important for you as well to exercise frequently. Faculty- versus-student competitions create pathways to make connections and build communities on campus, which could ultimately break down the barriers that exist unwittingly; and fears could be allayed in terms of communication. Nevertheless, many times, in our quest to triumph in sport, we disremember our differently- abled brothers and sisters, and also (engage in) gender-bias,” she detailed.
“In that regard, I humbly urge you all to be more cognizant of best practices that consistently include women and persons with disabilities in sport, professors, lecturers, staff members, students. All of the skill sets that one would need to make an important contribution to Guyana’s history would not be obtained through formal classroom structure, but can unquestionably be honed through involvement in sport,” Campbell said.
Vice-Chancellor Paloma Mohammed also delivered some remarks. She announced that the Faculty of Education and Humanities would be implementing a sports program that is tailored to coaching and management.
“The Faculty of Education and Humanities is restructuring its humanities side to include a sports programme. Of course, there’s one being developed in the College of Medical Sciences, a sports medicine programme, but this one is going to be on coaching and management. So, we’re going to expect that to start in a couple of months; because the negotiations have already been made for the coaches, the people who are going to teach and develop the programme, to come,” she divulged.
“So, we would hope that, very shortly, those people who are practitioners and who don’t have the academic background to teach in schools or teach in the university, will be able to do so,” she explained.
Further, Professor Mohammed divulged that the cost of the UG sports programme would be absorbed by the Government. That represented the best news for persons who have for some time been struggling in regard to resources.
She explained that key resources for the university sports programmes would come from the Learning Resources Fund, but students would need to pay some minor expenses outside of tuition. Part of what they pay would be channelled to the university to assist in administering the programme.
Importantly, she explained that the President of Guyana and the ministers of Education and Finance have already declared that tuition fees to attend UG would henceforth be absorbed by the Government of Guyana.
“And that means that the full amount of what should come to the university for sports and other things will be had,” she explained.