As the world is grappling with the Novel Coronavirus (Covid-19), Sheltez Tennis Club, is among one of the local clubs to have felt the brunt of its impact.
Stabroek Sport reached out to the National coach and executive of the club, Shelly Daly-Ramdyhan, who enlightened this publication on the effects of the pandemic on the club’s yearly plan, which, in her estimation, has been stalled for at least another two months.
“I will say for the next two-three months nothing is going to happen with tennis,” she declared.
“We have to focus on the safety of our players and their families so that is a priority right now…we have to adhere to the rules by the ministry and WHO in terms of social distancing so the kids couldn’t train and so.,” Daly-Ramdyhan posited.
“It’s [the impact] big because it affects our plan and some of the goals we set out to do and this is from the national level so far. I am not in authority to say exactly when it will happen from the national level but I don’t see anything happening before June/July as it relates to our club, it is a big blow because we had a whole lot of things in place,” she added.
At the forefront of the club’s plans was the hosting of their tennis camp. Daly-Ramdyhan explained:“Our camp has been affected terribly because we would have partnered with some colleagues in Canada and they were expected to arrive at least two of them for the camp and one of the coaches was bringing his two sons and we were expected to have a competition so we would have had some international competitors for the players who are 12-14 which is the key age for development.”
Additionally, the club was expected to venture to neighboring Suriname to take part in a series between some of the top teams in the country as well as Jamaica while two of their budding talents were earmarked to travel to Antigua for an under-12 tournament.
“We had a Goodwill meet between our clubs and one of the top clubs in Suriname, we had already begun putting things in place for that trip at the end of April, we were also hoping to have two of our under 12 players participate in a tournament [ITF/COTECC U12] in Antigua but that wouldn’t be happening because ITF asked that all the tournaments sanctioned by ITF be cancelled or postponed for those who can be postponed… Our trip to Jamaica is also affected by this and that would have been by the end of June and as it is now we have already pulled out our players, we don’t know if it’s going to happen still but we are not going to participate,” Daly-Ramdyhan stated.
The Guyana Tennis Association Coach of the Year also disclosed that their fifth annual junior Independence tournament will not be serving off this year but should the situation get better, there is a possibility the club can have an in-house competition.
“Our annual Independence tournament which was scheduled to start the last week in April and run into May, with that international part scheduled to the end of May to coincide with the Independence celebrations is also affected. We just had an executive meeting via social media, and this is from the club level again to cancel this year, we are in contact with our sponsors because nothing is going to happen but we will try to do an internal competition with our members once everything resumes maybe by August,” she said.
However, the national coach is optimistic that the tennis fraternity is doing the most with the limitations of the situation.
“If I could speak for the players and coaches, everybody is adjusting to this whole new situation, the players are definitely not happy being isolated at home and we have constant contact with most of them especially at the club level so what I try to do is send exercises and drills so they can do at home then we encourage them to focus on their school work which is our number one priority,” She noted.
