The Athletics Association of Guyana (AAG) named a nine-member team on Sunday to attend the 2013 CARIFTA Games which will be held in Bahamas March 29-April 1, but a few local coaches feel that their athletes were not given ample opportunities to qualify for the meet.
The 2013 CARIFTA team reportedly comprises overseas-based athletes Kadecia Baird, Ashley Tasher and Syron McKenzie along with locals Jason Yaw, Avon Samuels, Tirana Mitchell, Jevina Straker, Cassie George and Alita Moore.
Notable absentee from this year’s team is 2012 girls under 17 1500m bronze medallist Andrea Foster who failed to make the qualifying standard.
The beginning of the year for athletics was marred with the AAG’s quadrennial election followed by an injunction from former president Colin Boyce which was only withdrawn last week.
Consequently, the AAG had to use their first track meet of the season, traditionally a Developmental Meet, as the trials for the CARIFTA Games. A few coaches felt that their athletes were not given enough time to achieve the qualifying standards due to the haphazard events leading up to and including the staging of the trials.
The AAG ran off its first track meet of the year, the AAG Developmental Meet one, two Sunday’s ago at the Guyana Defence Force ground, Camp Ayanganna.
The body had indicated that that first meet would be used as the trials for the CARIFTA Games.
Two to three developmental meets have in previous years, been held earlier in the track season just as athletes would have finished their off-season training.
The meets are usually used as trial runs for coaches to see their athletes’ performance after the off-season and identify areas that the athletes need to work on for the competition season.
One of the coaches told this newspaper that Foster and Police Progressive Youth Club’s Tiffany Carto would have achieved the qualifying times if there were more competitions. According to the coach, he was surprised at the performances of the athletes who made the qualifying standards since this year’s competitions’ schedule did not facilitate getting the optimum from the athletes.
He pointed out that Foster significantly improved on her performances from the previous week and came closer to achieving the qualifying standards on Sunday.
Guyana defence Force coach Robert Chisholm stated that he did not think that it was fair to athletes to have to achieve the CARIFTA standards at their first meet of the season.
Ornesto Thomas of the University of Guyana Track and Field Club, was another athlete who came agonizingly close to making the qualifying standard.
Thomas, who is one of the country’s top middle distance campaigners, is in his last year of eligibility in the U17 category.
Thomas has a personal record that is faster than the qualifying standard but he recorded that personal best last year, when he was just 15 years-old.
UG track and field club coach Anson Ambrose feels that Thomas and another one of his athletes’ Tasnica Lovell were disenfranchised by the AAG for only using one meet as the CARIFTA trials in light of the circumstances of this track season.
Ambrose added that he was disappointed with the AAG for not issuing the times of the athletes for last Sunday’s events.
“I am very dissatisfied because UG dominated in the field events and you have no results to show until now,” Ambrose said. The former Royal Youth Movement coach, said that he was hoping that prospective sponsors would recognise the performance of the athletes emerging from the UG track and field club and assist with funding for imminent overseas competitions.
Stabroek Sport also tried to ascertain official results from yesterday’s event but received nothing official. Stabroek Sports was also informed that although the AAG’s Technical Official Mark Scott had indicated that athletes could have used Sunday’s meet to qualify for CARIFTA, a decision was taken by the AAG that the first Developmental Meet was exclusively the qualification meet.
Foster’s mother, former national champion Alisha Fortune, on the other hand stated last night that herself and her daughter had still been under the impression that last Sunday’s meet could have been used to qualify for CARIFTA and that was their intention. Up to press time last night, Stabroek Sport still had not received the official results of Sunday’s meet from to verify if any other athletes would have achieved the qualifying standard.
