Tucber Park Cricket Club (TPCC) completed its first-ever summer camp on Saturday.
The camp, which was the first official cricket camp to be held in the New Amsterdam area, commenced August 13, a day later than originally planned because of the national holiday Eid-Ul-Adha.
Saturday last, was the final day and all the participants were involved in matches where they were able to implement some of the skills learnt during the camp.
A small presentation ceremony, held at the Berbice High School auditorium, culminated the camp where over 50 participants were presented with medals and certificates of participation. Gifts and trophies, donated by Trophy Stall, the Berbice Cricket Board, and the Rose Hall Town Youth and Sports Club were presented to the outstanding participants.
The camp focused on basics skills in cricket; batting, bowling, fielding and wicketkeeping along with other life skills. Life skills presentations were done every morning of each day of the camp followed by cricket skills. Topics like leadership and captaincy, the importance of education, discipline and the rights of a child were some of the topics covered.
Co-ordinator Anthony D’Andrade made a presentation on leadership and captaincy while the importance of education and its relation to sports was presented by Carl Ramsammy; a teacher at Canje Secondary School. A presentation on the topic of discipline was done by Umpire Zaheer Moakan; a teacher of Berbice High School while Zipporah Joseph, the Child Care and Protection Agency Officer of Region Sx made a presentation focussing on the rights of a child and how children should be wary of the different types of child abuses.
On the opening day, the Mayor of New Amsterdam, Winifred Heywood, congratulated the participants for attending the historic event and encouraged them to learn as much as they could during the camp. She also mentioned the importance of education and encouraged everyone to find the right balance for sport and education and not to neglect one for the other. President of the Berbice Cricket Board and Rose Hall Town Youth and Sports club, Hilbert Foster reiterated the remarks of the Mayor and encouraged the youths to say no to drugs so that they can become good ambassadors of TPCC, Berbice and Guyana.
The coaches that were involved in the camp were West Indies female player and National Under 19 female team coach Tremayne Smartt, former national youth player D’Andrade, former Guyana and West Indies pacer Colin Stuart, senior Academy coach Michael Hyles and National under 19 and senior team Academy coach Julian Moore. Smartt and D’Andrade covered batting and fielding while Stuart and Hyles did basic bowling (pace and spin) along with wicket keeping. Moore did a presentation on fielding positions, modes of dismissal of a batsman and running between the wickets.
Coordinator D’Andrade said that he was encouraged by the response of the children who came from as far as Goed Banana Land, Canje. The TPCC, in a release stated that it would like to thank Berbice High School for allowing the use of their facilities not just for this camp but for the past 20 years and also all the sponsors and those involved in making the camp a success.
