The Guyana Hockey Board (GHB) has received a proposed 2021 – 2022 Pan Am hockey calendar following a number of interruptions in 2020 by the global COVID – 19 pandemic which forced the cancellation of a number of tournaments.
Stabroek Sport was informed by president of the local body, Philip Fernandes, that the Pan American Hockey Federation (PAHF) is keen to utilise the experiences of other sports disciplines to populate the 2021-22 calendar with a return to competitive hockey action.
The PanAm body is aiming for an April 2021 restart with the hosting of the Junior PanAm Games to be held between April 12 and 25 in Santiago, Chile followed by the PamAm Challenge from May 6-16, 2021.
The PAHF Indoor Cup is set to follow in June next year in Philadelphia, USA, while the highly anticipated PanAm Cup, which was to be hosted in Trinidad in 2021, has now been shifted to January 2022 in Chile. Stabroek Sport understands that Trinidad gave up the rights to host the tournament.
The new developments have spurred the GHB to put contingency measures in place particularly as it relates to the preparation. However, Fernandes indicated to this publication that there are no firm plans as yet. The board, he said, will meet shortly to charter the way forward.
“We only got the information this morning [Tuesday]…we will now have to meet shortly to disuses our plans to determine whether we will try to attend the same tournaments that we had hoped to do in 2020 because a lot of those tournaments are the ones that were moved from 2020 to 2021,” said fernandes. He lamented the fact that financing to facilitate Guyana’s attendance, along with coping with training under the current prevailing circumstances, might pose some challenges.
However, he said that the advice and assistance from the government and other stakeholders are key factors in the process.
“We have to see what our budget constraints will be. That will be a major deciding factor and also the time is important because we have a few juniors who may be writing exams and we have to see how the days [for the tournaments] measure up against those.
“A next thing will be to approach the ministry to see when they would allow the return of training or whether they have any guidelines for us to follow. Once we get that permission from them and we know what we are aiming at, we’ll resume training. The meeting will also decide whether the training starts before or after the Christmas season,” Fernandes informed Stabroek Sport.
The GHB had already commenced preparations to attend the 2020 Junior PanAmerican hockey championships in Chile and the qualifiers for the 2021 PanAm Cup before COVID-19 reared its head.
