Throughout her years at high school, sport physiotherapist Angelica Holder, 26, originally of Richmond Hill, Linden, wanted to become a doctor or a lawyer but one month after beginning the pre-med programme at the University of Guyana, she realised that medicine would not suit the lifestyle she was looking forward to and switched to physiotherapy.
“It was a good thing I realised that early, because it meant I might not have thrived in medicine. At the time I had no idea what physiotherapy was until I saw the programme being offered at UG. It was a fairly new programme and very-science oriented with a lot of topics I wanted to study,” she said.
As a physiotherapist, she uses exercise and non-invasive procedures to rehabilitate or treat musculoskeletal injuries, strains and sprains. “There is a lot of science in using exercise to get people stronger in general. We advocate for more exercise over medicine because it is safe and it has a lot of physiological benefits,” she enthused. “It gets you healthier and when you have injuries you learn to appreciate how much the body does for you. Simple exercises help to lower pain and get you stronger. It can also prevent injury and enhances performance, especially in sport.”
She added, “As soon as anyone hears I’m a physio, automatically they say their back hurts, their shoulder hurts. It doesn’t matter if it is someone I know or not.”
Physiotherapist with the national senior men’s cricket team, Guyana Harpy Eagles, Holder told the Stabroek Weekend that as soon as she realised what she wanted to do she had a heart-to-heart talk with her father, William Holder Snr, a former national badminton champion for many years.
“When I told him I didn’t want to be a medical doctor anymore and I wanted to do physiotherapy, he said, ‘Hey, go right ahead. It is a pretty good profession. It’s going to work out perfectly for me’. He was probably one of my main inspirations for entering this field. I still consider him a badminton athlete who still plays even though he is about to turn 70 and has had therapy several times for injuries he sustained during play or practice,” she said.
“As physios, we encourage exercise and functionality in all ages, especially in older adults. For my father, it works out great because he is still athletic, he is getting older and having a daughter who does physiotherapy works out for him.”
She noted that many people think it is just massaging athletes on the field. “There is so much more. It is working with people with disabilities, people of different ages. I knew I was more open-minded to do sports physio because of my father,” she added.
To date, Holder has enjoyed all the experiences she has had in learning about and practising her profession.
“At UG, the programme is created for you to have a rounded profession,” she stated. “Working in the public sector encouraged me to do that. In the public service I worked with babies, patients in intensive care units of hospitals, older people, people with neurological deficits including spinal injuries and strokes and orthopaedic patients.”
She also worked in the Covid-19 Unit at the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPH) and subsequently, the Infectious Diseases Speciality Hospital at Liliendaal before joining the private sector.
While pursuing her studies at UG, her internships were done at the Mackenzie Hospital, Ptolemy Reid Rehabilitation Centre and twice at the West Demerara Regional Hospital (WDRH).
After graduation she was first assigned to work at WDRH after which she was moved to the GPH and then at the Palms Rehabilitation Facility.
Holder started working full time at the Ministry of Health in October 2018. She volunteered her service on weekends and on days off with different sporting organisations where they could fit her in.
“I volunteered also as a student. At one point I was working full time at the Ministry of Health, volunteering my services and working part time as a personal trainer at the Top End gym just to gain experience in the field,” she said.
In 2017, along with some other students, she volunteered her services at the Guyana CrossFit Games. Later that year she volunteered at the Junior Caribbean Squash Tournament. In 2018, her final year at UG, she volunteered as an assistant personal trainer for Guyana’s cricket teams in the A to C divisions. Thus was born her desire to work with cricket athletes.
“I volunteered for the Aliann Pompey invitational track and field meet in 2018. We had some pretty big-name track athletes. That was very exciting for me. It was the first time I was exposed to an international meet. It was a lot of work for us behind the scenes,” she said.
She also worked in football with the Concacaf (the Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football) girls under 20 in July 2019 and later that year she worked with the Concacaf Girls under 17.
In 2019, she also assisted one of the physios with fitness testing for the Guyana Cricket Board. “I started to come around cricket a lot more in 2019 because I wanted to work in cricket eventually,” she said. “I volunteered my time with fitness tests and helped the physio, Neil Barry, at the time. I assisted another colleague with the senior male team for the national male football team.”
In 2021, Holder spent the year in Region Six (East Berbice/Corentyne) co-managing the region’s physiotherapy department which has three clinics at the public hospitals in New Amsterdam, Port Mourant and Skeldon. She then returned to the ICU and the Burns Unit at the GPH.
“The experience in Region Six was good. For the first time I lived on my own. I had never been there before. I learned to manoeuvre the system to get the best for the staff and the patients at the three clinics,” she recalled. “The managerial role was also new. It was a learning curve for me. It allowed for me to understand the challenges we have in the public service. For instance, in the regions we had to work with limited resources unlike Georgetown and at times improvised as best as possible. Luckily in Berbice, they are supportive of physiotherapy so we were able to accomplish a few things within our means.”
While she was working in Region Six, she was selected to accompany Guyana’s athletes to the Olympics in Japan.
She left the public service in November 2022 when she started working with the Guyana Harpy Eagles.
Selection for the Olympics
Holder was working at the Palms when a hockey athlete informed her that the Guyana Olympic Association (GOA) was collaborating with a sports medicine doctor from Trinidad and
Tobago to conduct some online Zoom sessions with a group of young professionals, both doctors and physios, to further build sports medicine in Guyana. Holder took part in the sessions.
“I had no idea they would select someone from those sessions to accompany the athletes to the Olympics. I was just there to learn. One day, the president of the Guyana Physiotherapy Association told me the GOA had contacted her and asked if she would recommend me as the physiotherapist to accompany the athletes to the Japan Summer Olympics held in 2021. At one of the cricket matches where I was assisting voluntarily she said she saw and appreciated what I was doing. She was confident in recommending me to work for the Olympics,” she related.
For the Olympics, Holder had to perform a dual role as physio and the Covid-19 liaison officer for the contingent. Her logistical arrangements included organising testing using the right formats. At the games, she monitored everyone’s movements and ensured they adhered to the protocols. Guyana’s contingent included seven athletes and as the events were completed, the athletes left two days after. “We never had the whole team together at any time which was different from previous Olympics. Usually, the athletes stayed together and attended the various events to support their fellow athletes,” she said.
As the physiotherapist, Holder attended all the events in which the local athletes participated. She sat courtside while table tennis athlete Chelsea Edghill played. “I had never worked with table tennis before. I wasn’t sure what to expect but they told me I could go on the field basically because that was where the doctors sat and Guyana had no doctor present,” she said.
Last year, Holder was the physiotherapist for the Guyana Amazon Warriors women’s team in the first women’s Caribbean Premier League tournament. “It was new for me. I hadn’t seen much women’s cricket. I really enjoyed it,” she said.
Working with men
Working with the men is not as bad as most people would think, she said. It was not difficult transitioning from the clinical setting because she had been around the cricketers since 2019 as a volunteer.
“Since then they know my face and my name. As a woman working with the team, you would think I would have more challenges in making my presence known or taken seriously. I have never been disrespected or taken advantage of,” she stated. “It is within cricket culture for the guys to be respectful of women, whether young or old. One of the things I enjoy about working with these players is getting to know them outside of being athletes. As the physio I get to see them in all different stages as sport professionals, when they are injured and how different that is. I like being there for them on and off the field.
“The challenge is that I’m young and petite and sometimes some of the men think I am not strong enough to handle big burly men until I apply myself or when they see me pick up some heavy weight and they are shocked. … I usually have to fetch my massage bed which is two times my size. They think that is so heavy but it is not.”
An avid blood donor, Holder has donated some 20 times and was honoured by the National Blood Bank for her contributions. “It is something I advocate for. I always try to get a new donor to go with me. It is something my family has done over the years. In the records you would probably see William Holder Snr, William Holder and Angelica Holder. It’s a family thing we do,” she noted.
Holder was born in Linden where she spent her formative years. She attended Watooka Day Primary School and Queen’s College after which she obtained a bachelor’s degree in medical
rehabilitation from the University of Guyana. She is currently pursuing, online, a master’s degree in sports medicine from the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, Jamaica.
The last of three siblings and the only girl child, Holder said, “Growing up in Richmond Hill, a small and quiet community in Linden surrounded by hills, my early childhood was probably one of the best a child could have had. I did a lot of outdoor activities including playing in the hills and biking with the neighbourhood children in the community. The blue lakes are literally close to our home.”
When Holder wrote ‘common entrance’ she was the top student for Region Ten, Upper Demerara/Upper Berbice. Her brother William also attended Queen’s College and as a family they visited him in the city so the transition from Linden to Georgetown was not so challenging.
Two other children from Watooka also attended Queen’s College at the same time as her so she never felt alone or isolated. “We were all new so that wasn’t bad,” she recalled.
The hardest part of the transition initially was keeping up good grades, she said, but there was some relief when she learned that life was not all about academics.
