The Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports (MYCS)/ National Sports Commission will sponsor the second edition of the East Coast Under 17 Cricket Camp at the Enterprise Community Centre Ground, East Coast Demerara, beginning next Monday.
The camp will run through to Friday from 8:30am – 12pm daily and is open to both male and female individuals under the age of 17, targeting individuals coming from communities on the East Coast of Demerara. On Monday the opening ceremony will begin at 10am, and is expected to be graced by the presence of the Director of Sports, Neil Kumar.
The programme is expected to be presided over by three coaches namely Latchman Yardram, Daniel Richmond and Linden Johnson, who is also a national table tennis coach.
According to Yardram, the camp will centere on teaching the students the basic skills of cricket, both theoretically and practically, with an emphasis on inculcating discipline and good leadership skills in the sport.
The courses on discipline and leadership are expected to be conducted by Administrative Officer of the National Sports Commission, Gervy Harry.
“It’s all about educating these students and developing their skills. Our objective is to instill in these youths the basics of the game, and the seriousness of discipline and leadership.
We will have the basics of cricket, the batting, bowling and fielding, and we will have some table tennis,” Yardram said.
This is the second year that this initiative is being implemented, having first being held in 2010, when some 56 students attended.
The camp ended with the students demonstrating their skills in matches, while each student also received a participation certificate.
As was the case the first year, Yardram said, the camp will also feature sessions on HIV and road safety awareness. The camp will also have training in table tennis, conducted by Johnson.
Yardram relayed that several secondary and primary schools were notified of the programme and he is hopeful that a healthy number of children will turn up to take advantage of the training program. It is hoped that the camp will pique the interest of the participants to become full time participants in the Enterprise Sports Club or any one of the many clubs on the East Coast. Yardram noted that several prominent cricket players have come from the East Coast area.
The club participates in several sporting activities apart from cricket, but, Yardram said, the activities are done more on a leisure basis rather than competitively due to the lack of participants. However he hopes projects such as this camp could help to boost the situation.
