By Avenash Ramzan
Despite heavy early morning showers in the capital Georgetown, the Guyana Girls Academy’s first-ever camp for young female footballers got underway at the Transport Sports Club, Thomas Lands.
While the downpour limited the planned outdoor activities on the actual outfield, the organisers utilised the concrete-based tennis court and auditorium of the Club to commence work with the 30-odd young ladies.
The camp is geared towards giving young girls a peek into the Guyana Girls Academy, as well as creating more interest in Girls’ football. This camp, which is the first to be conducted by the body since its formation last year, will conclude on Friday and is open to girls, ages seven to 11.
The camp will allow the Guyanese to get a taste of the Academy and girls football with an elite coaching staff in a professional environment, on and off the field.
Head of the Guyana Girls Academy, Colin Wilson, is spearheading the camp, which is utilising the services of overseas, as well as local personnel, including Women’s Development Officer of the Guyana Football Federation Tricia Munroe and coach Sherry Abrams.
“For the next couple of days it will be mostly technical work with the individual girls, with the individual ball- learning how to kick the ball correctly, dribble correctly, (and) control the ball. We did have a couple of issue with the rain today and ground and things like that so the first thing is about safety, making sure everybody is okay and then we would go from there. So we want to keep them safe, we want to work on their individual technique and as always we want them to have fun,” Wilson told News Room Sport.
While the ultimate aim is to have the girls train year around in another five to 10 years time, Wilson shared what the organisation hopes to achieve by the conclusion of this inaugural three-day camp.
“At the end of the three days I’m hoping the girls would want to come back for more. What we want to do is build that pool of girls so that we have more and more girls, and the more girls we have the more competitive we’ll be as a country, so we want the girls to have fun first so they would want to come back and learn more,” Wilson explained.
In a country where tangible and sustained financial support for the development of sport is hard to come by, Wilson said strong backing from stakeholders here would be crucial to the expansion of the programme.
“I’ve been speaking with various entities around here- the GFF and other groups- and they like what I’m doing; they like what we’re trying to bring. We’ve already talked about coming back again. I think right now we’re definitely looking at coming back next year in July, but my organisation definitely wants me to come back before then. So we’re looking maybe six months down the road,” Wilson explained.
Funding for this current camp has been garnered from the diaspora in Atlanta, but Wilson said the Guyana Girls Academy is looking beyond that pool to ensure the programme is not just sustained, but also churns out the type of results they are hoping for.
“What we would like to do at the end of it is to have a sponsor; someone who can come in and donate various things that we need, and still have the support from the people abroad as well,” Wilson stressed.
Wilson further stated that the feedback from stakeholders in Guyana has been very positive and encouraging, something that he is enthused about.
