By Iva Wharton
The Guyana Table Tennis Association (GTTA) Saturday handed over just over eight hundred thousand dollars in cash incentives to players and coaches of the national junior team their sterling performances at the just-concluded Pre-Cadet and Cadet Caribbean championships in Jamaica.
“I think it has been unprecedented and I was very pleased as the results started to come in I realized that the children were highly motivated,” GTTA president Henry Greene said on Saturday.
“Table tennis is a game that calls for mental work and determination apart from your skill and ability and I think though highly motivated most of you would have been responsible forthe successes we got in Jamaica. My understanding is that we got five gold medals, four silver medals and 10 bronze medals,” Greene told the gathering which also included some parents.
Elishaba Johnson and Priscilla Greaves each walked off with $100,000
for being adjudged the most outstanding junior boy and girl respectively.
One hundred thousand dollars was also given to the Under-13 boys and girls teams for winning the team events at the championships.
That money is to be divided by the number of players on the teams.
Also, each of four coaches received $50,000 while Chelsea Edghill also received $50,000 for her performance in Mexico along with her coach Idi Lewis.
Greene said that to the best his knowledge no representative national team had ever brought back so many medals adding that the parents should also be commended for the work they did at home and in Jamaica.
It is the hard work of parents through fund raisers that made it possible for some players to travel.
“We must not sit down and rely on sponsors only, we must also help ourselves. They took a pattern from the association because we as an association can proudly say that we have not been sitting down. We have not been waiting on sponsorship and we have also been doing fund raisers to ensure that that we can have funds to use to do what we have to do,” Greene said.
