By Iva Wharton
One hundred and fifty-four schools across the country will compete in the second staging of the Digicel’s Schools Football Tournament scheduled to start on June 15th at the Georgetown Cricket Club Ground, Bourda.
Among those schools are three new schools from Amerindian communities: Wakapau – Region Two, St. Cuthbert’s Mission – Region Four, and Wanaina – Region One.
Coordinator of the tournament Lavern Fraser-Thomas said that this year the competition will have some changes which will serve to enhance the game. Last year, she said, with the involvement of the technical institutes the age limit was 19 years and under but this year the tournament will cater for students 18 years and under.
However, Fraser said that only two technical institutes will not be competing – Essequibo and Linden.
Apart from widening the pool of players available for selection by associations and the Guyana Football Federation, it was felt that having the technical institutes involved would give them an unfair advantage over other schools, according to Fraser.
“I must say that it was a motivation for a number of schools which did not register last year to participate this year.”
The format remains the same as the regional tournament will serve to identify the eleven regional champions and this will be followed by the playoffs to identify the quarter-finalists, semi-finalists and then the finalists.
Fraser said too that this year the company would be decentralizing the game, “So it means that not all the games will be played in Georgetown. Games will be played across the region, so I think we all can expect to have an exciting time and everyone will have a chance to be involved.”
Meanwhile, after a draw, two regions were identified to face each other in the playoffs and secure a place in the quarter-finals – Regions 1 and 7 will face each other and then there will be Region 5 against Region 9 and Region 10 versus Region 8.
However, Regions 2,3,4,6 and Georgetown will automatically advance to the quarter-finals.
According to Fraser the regions involved in the playoffs were selected by virtue of having the least number of schools participating.
Asked about technical support provided to schools, Fraser said that coaches were provided to the Mahdia Secondary and another school on the Corentyne after requests were made on behalf of the schools.
An added attraction to this year’s tourney is a one million cash prize which will see $500,000, $300,000 and $200,000 being awarded to the first to third place teams. The money, according to Digicel’s Public Relations Officer, will go towards the execution of projects identified by the teams. The projects, she said, must be schools projects.
Noel Adonis, Secretary to the Guyana Football Federation said that Digicel has its full support. Digicel’s Chief Executive Officer, Gregory Dean said that last year was a great success for the company. “We were able to get a lot of schools involved and I think this year we are even more happy because we have one hundred and fifty-four schools on board.”
“. . . for us it has to be a long-term commitment before we are going to make a difference in the national or future national teams,” he added.
The company is 100 percent behind the development of football in Guyana and one aspect of the tournament he is proud of is the taking of city teams into the hinterland regions. “So one of the things we realized is that Waramadong and some of the other teams were coming out and the city teams did not have any idea where they were coming from nor did they have any idea of the country. So the good thing is that some of the so-called city players can travel to some of those communities and learn a bit more about the country. I think then you will be serving two purposes, not only developing football but we are helping each other to learn more about our big and vast country.” Sport Minister Dr. Frank Anthony in his address said that he is pleased that the company has decided on the age stratification in order to have a better playing field. “So that people will not be intimidated by bigger size people coming on the field and taking over. I am very pleased that they have taken these things into consideration, improving the quality that we have.”
He suggested that moves should be made to train the physical education teachers as coaches so that they can in turn work with the students.
Explaining why there is no female participation in the competition, Dean said that the company could not focus on several aspects of the sport at the same time.
He also said that other entities are involved in other aspects of the sport, namely Scotia Bank: “But I don’t know that we can take on all the different categories in terms of managing all those different tournaments but we have a commitment to get this one up to the best possible level.”
He said that once all the systems are in place for the current tournament, then they can move into other areas.
