International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) Course Conductor and United States (USATT) National Coach, Richard McAfee made his first visit to the land of many waters yesterday to conduct a level one ITTF coaching course organized by the Guyana Table Tennis Association (GTTA).
The course which starts today at 9am at the Cliff Anderson Sports Hall, will run for five days, six hours per day with the last day being dedicated to paralympic training, is aimed mainly at the youth aspect of the sport, according to McAfee.
“The course really focuses on the junior development of the sport, how to work with children and large groups, sports medicine, sports psychology around those areas, but it’s very much a youth focus whereas level 2 and 3 is more adult oriented,” McAfee stated.
McAfee also told Stabroek Sport that “I know Guyana has produced a lot of good table tennis players and I haven’t been here too long but from what I can see there is a lot of talent here and it’s nice to see the GTTA making progress in the sport because this is the second level one course in a month’s time.”
When questioned by Stabroek Sport on the difficulties in coaching a paralympic athlete he said, “Well it’s always difficult to train a person that has some form of disability but I just want to give the coaches a basis and the confidence on how to go about such a challenge.”
Stabreok Sport also asked about his main aim for the coaches and McAfee replied, “There are a couple of things that are important but I really want them to understand the importance of a coach’s role in a person’s life not just sport wise but personally as well, it’s not just some day to day activity.
One other thing is I hope to instill confidence in them so that they could go out in their areas and teach the sport, because if they quit when I leave then the course was a failure.
In addition to this the coaches have 30 hours to do some form of teaching in their areas and will be assigned an evaluator after the course is done, so there is some practicality in the course as well.”
Meanwhile, the GTTA is also trying to get coaches from all ten regions in Guyana involved so as to make the course more successful and broaden the sport throughout the country.
