On the heels of obtaining bachelor’s degrees in law and in political science simultaneously, both with first class honours, former Caribbean table tennis champion and national player Shemar Britton, 25, has qualified to play in the 2023 Pan American Games to be held in Chile in October based on his performance at the just-concluded Central American Games (CAC) held in El Salvador.
Britton, who has become the first male Guyanese to qualify to compete in table tennis at the Pan American Games, is an advocate and an example that sports and academics can go together. The Pan American Games is also the qualifier for the 2024 Olympics which will be held next year.
“I hope I can be an inspiration to someone who may want to choose academics over sports or vice versa. You don’t have to choose one or the other, you can do both. It is just about time management and sacrifice. A lot of children stop playing a sport because of common entrance or CXC [Caribbean Examinations Council] examinations. I never stopped,” Britton told Stabroek Weekend.
He continued, “After you stop playing a sport it is very hard to reenter playing at a competitive level because people who you were better than before you stopped playing, would have perfected their techniques and be better than you when you return. So you lose motivation.
“I never believed in stopping playing sports because of examinations. My mother and I discussed this many times. I had to balance both. One thing I have been blessed with was a very good support system.”
In June, the week before the CAC Games, Britton was awarded his degrees from the University of the West Indies, St Augustine Campus, Trinidad and Tobago.
While pursuing those degrees he achieved a career-high world ranking of 233 (highest by a male Guyanese player), represented Guyana at two Commonwealth Games, two CAC games and two South American Games.
Academics taking priority over sports is a pet peeve of his.
“Guyanese primary and secondary educational culture is just school, school and extra lessons all the time. Right now 10 and 11-year-olds are probably going to countless extra lessons and spending many late nights studying when they could do with a sport break. I am extremely proud of everyone who recently got their common entrance results. I was in their shoes and I know the pressure they felt,” he related. “I believe a child’s life at that age should be balanced. My mother always insisted on extra lessons for me. Extra lessons put too much pressure on children. Other people have other talents and abilities and can excel in things other than academics.”
Sport background
Britton was at Mae’s Primary when he was introduced to table tennis. From 8 to 11 years old he was already playing cricket and excelling in track and field at the national level. “I switched to table tennis, thanks to Sir Muniram at Mae’s, when I was 11 years old and since then it has only been table tennis. I have to thank Ms Shirley James and Ms Annette Lowe from Mae’s who instilled in me from an early age that I could do well in academics and sports. They pushed me to believe in myself,” he stated.
After sitting the then Secondary Schools Entrance Examinations, Britton was awarded a place at Queen’s College (QC) where he wrote the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examinations and graduated as an honour roll student.
In his first year at QC, Britton took part in the national table tennis school’s championship which was held in the QC auditorium. QC lost in the finals to St Rose’s High and Britton lost to Kyle Edghill, now a national teammate.
“From then, I made up my mind that I was going to take table tennis seriously. Coach Idi Lewis encouraged me to join Malteenoes Sports Club. It was convenient for me because Malteenoes is a five-minute walk away from QC. The very next afternoon, it was a Monday, after losing that table tennis championship, I walked over to Malteenoes and started training under Idi,” he recalled.
At Malteenoes, within two years, from being the number four on the national team, he became the men’s champion of Guyana.
“I became the youngest ever men’s champion at 14 years and joined the men’s senior team. I was pretty much the junior on the team and playing with the legends of Guyana’s table tennis, Idi Lewis, Christopher Franklin, Godfrey Munroe,” he said.
At 14 years old he was on the team to his first Commonwealth Games held that year in Scotland; it was 2014. He played in a doubles match and sat out the remaining games as a learning experience.
After that he represented Guyana continuously, missing the Caribbean Championship in Cuba in 2014 due to lack of funding. He also missed it in 2015 because it clashed with the writing of the CSEC examinations.
In 2016, his final year as a junior table tennis player, he lost in the semi-finals to the eventual winner. That same year, at the games held in the Dominican Republic, he also played in the men’s team which took third place. He captained the team.
“All the time I was gaining experience in playing, in captaincy and in travel,” he noted.
Juggling studies and sports
“It was tough sometimes juggling studies, training and taking part in competitions but my mother, Dawn Britton, a very strict woman, is a superhero. She reminded me constantly that sport and academics could not go one without the other. She warned me that if at any time my grades dropped she was going to pull me from table tennis immediately. That was always at the back of my mind,” he shared. “The hardest part was time management. As a teenager you have to go to school, you want to go to table tennis and you still want to hang out with your friends and have as normal a life as possible. It was important to remember if I wanted to do all those things I had to make some sacrifices. The times I ‘hang out’ with my friends I had to sacrifice training or studying. At times it was difficult because we had to also factor in extra lessons after school. Sometimes they went late and I had to miss training so I had to make up by training early in the morning.”
At school, he noted, he had some very good teachers but there were some who said he had to give up the sport because exams were around the corner.
The principal at QC Jackie Benn-Ralph, he said, helped him tremendously despite teachers telling her his activities would hinder his studies. “She gave me permission to miss classes if I had to take part in a championship for a week or a few days during the school term. Then I had to catch up with work when I returned,” he said.
In fourth form, Britton was selected to take part in a one-month high performance Youth Olympics Camp in Chenju, China. At the time QC had end-of-term examinations.
“Some teachers advised Miss Benn that I shouldn’t go and if I went I should repeat fourth form because I would miss writing the end-of-term examinations. Miss Benn believed in me and gave me permission to travel. She told me to do my best and make up for the missed time on my return,” he stated.
“That Youth Olympics Camp was probably the best table tennis experience I’ve ever had. The very best youth players and the very best mentors in the world including former world champions were there. I learnt so much in that one month that some things I do today are from things I learned then. It was me and Trenace Lowe, national women’s player. During that first week, Trenace and I looked at ourselves and wondered if we belonged there. We were so far behind other players in terms of techniques, fitness, experience, exposure, funding, everything. We asked ourselves if we would be able to keep up with the others. After that first week, we decided we were just going to make the best of the opportunity. We improved day after day. By the end of the camp, I was one of the best players. Coaches were actually asking me to stay for a longer time in China. Of course I couldn’t. I had to return to school.”
At the Bishops’ High School where he moved to write the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examinations with a focus on pursuing a career in law, Britton said, “There were other teachers, like Ms [Claire] Mason at Bishops’ who believed in me and allowed me extra time.”
After completing his secondary education, he took a year off studies before enrolling at the UWI where he pursued the two degrees he just obtained. In Trinidad, he played table tennis for Queen’s Park Cricket Club. Britton chose UWI, St Augustine Campus because of table tennis.
“I had a very good relationship with the coaches and players there. I knew if I were at UWI, I could still be comfortable. Trinidadian senior table tennis coach Aaron Edwards and I had become very close over the years and he treated me like family. That relationship smoothened my adjustment in Trinidad,” he shared.
Britton played table tennis for the UWI and took part in the 2019 UWI Games in Jamaica where he won the men’s championship in which he faced two Jamaican national players.
Britton lived on campus at Sir Arthur Lewis Hall. “Studying was tough,” he noted, “but thankfully I knew how to manage my time and to balance school life, sports life and personal life to achieve my ultimate goal of graduating with two degrees.”
At the UWI, he knew he was on the path to becoming an honour student. “I was frequently on the deans’ lists but I was just glad I finished strong in spite of the last semester being very hectic.” Many times during his three years at the UWI he had to leave to play in tournaments.
“When I played in the Pan American championship, I did assignments and examinations on planes and stuff like that. I was a little bit worried that maybe my grades would suffer because of my pursuit of table tennis. A lot of people would say I’m a part-time athlete. I always say, I am a full-time student and a full-time athlete.”
He took time to discuss his sporting activities with his lecturers and tutors. “I had to be very persuasive and convincing for some of them to grant me the time off. Some were lenient and some were not so lenient,” he noted. When he missed classes to play in a championship he had to catch up on his return.
Championships
In 2018 when the Caribbean Table Tennis Championships were held in Jamaica, Britton won the Caribbean Under-21 male title. He was still at the Bishops’ High. The team included Christopher Franklin, Nigel Bryan and Joel Alleyne. “We won the silver medal in the team’s championship and I won the under-21,” he said.
In 2019 Guyana hosted the Caribbean Championships and Guyana finished third in the teams. Britton finished second in the under 21, and third in the men’s singles. The bronze medal was his first senior single medal at the Caribbean level.
In 2020 and 2021 the games were impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2022, Guyana took part in the Pan American championships and Guyana was third in the teams. Britton was ousted in the quarter finals in the men’s singles. “The quarter final is the furthest Guyana has been in the Pan American Championships,” he noted.
Britton also took part in the Commonwealth Games held in Australia in 2022. At the end of 2022, Guyana took part in the South American Games held in Paraguay and the team again lost in the quarter finals. Earlier this year, the Caribbean Championships returned to Guyana and Guyana finished in third place. That tournament was a qualifier for the CAC Games which ended two weeks ago and in which Britton made it to the quarter finals and qualified for the Pan American Games.
Going forward
“Right now I’m at a literal crossroads of whether I should take the year off to try to achieve my dreams of going to the Olympics. For the Pan Am Games, I am awaiting funding so I can go somewhere, maybe Europe to train. I was supposed to have a meeting with a senior sport official but that meeting is yet to take place. Hopefully we can come up with a plan and I can come to a decision about competing in the Pan Am Games,” he said.
“Going to Hugh Wooding Law School in September would most likely mean no Olympics for me next year. Any decision I take will not be taken lightly. In the meantime, I’m training as hard as possible with Idi Lewis and the men’s national team that includes Johnathan Van Lange, Christopher Franklin and Nigel Bryan.”
For as long as he could remember Britton wanted to be a lawyer. “I grew up admiring the legal profession and I am looking at the corporate side of law specialising in oil and gas and finance,” he said. “Right now Guyana is becoming big in oil and gas so I would like to pursue that area. During my undergraduate study I was very good in oil and gas law.”
Why study political science? “Why not study political science and become more equipped should I decide to go into politics later on in life? A lot of lawyers and a lot of my mentors have a political science background so I thought it should do me well,” he reasoned. “I have had the good fortune to travel to a lot of countries and maybe because I am biased towards Guyana, I often say that with good governance, Guyana can be a lot better than a lot of those countries. We need good leadership, good governance for our country to really blossom. Guyana is waiting to reach her full potential and hopefully I can help along the way.”
