Petra aiming to increase coaches pool in youth football

With the Petra Organisation zooming its focus on the development of youth football, the Directors are turning their attention to increasing the pool of coaches for the various school teams.

Hosting tournaments for Pee Wee to the Under-18 age group, the central focus from providing a platform for playing time will be slightly shifted to ensure that the players are under the guidance of capable coaches to foster their development.

This is according to Co-Director of the organisation, Troy Mendonca.

“The Guyana Football Federation has its own challenges and one of the areas we want to address is the issue of coaching. A lot of times, most schools use their physical education teacher to run the programme in itself due to the multi-tasking. We have been working very closely with the teachers and we understand the strain. So from a footballing aspect for we would want to go after some kind of funding for coaches to be assigned to schools with the assistance of the GFF,” Mendonca explained.

The former Georgetown Football Association president further indicated that the role of the coaches will not be just be to instil tactical prowess on players, but also monitor their development.

“We would like to see us and the GFF have a smooth flow during the year so come the end of the year, we can have the best teams and an all-star team being able to showcase their skills and match the talents among our Caribbean counterparts.”

To some extent, his endeavour to have Guyanese players pitted against regional counterparts has already materialised with the recently concluded KFC Goodwill Tournament involving eventual champions Shiva Boys’ Hindu College of Trinidad and Tobago.

The Petra Organisation currently hosts several age group tournaments, among them the Smalta and Courts Pee Wee, ExxonMobil Boys and Girls Under-14, GuyOil School League and Milo sponsored Schools competition.