By Neto Baptiste
President of the Antigua and Barbuda Athletics Association (ABAA), Everton “Mano” Cornelius, believes that it has been a good year for sport in Antigua and Barbuda at the junior level.
Pointing to performances like that of sprinter LaNika Locker who, in August, became the country’s first female athlete to win a medal at the Commonwealth Youth Games, and 15-year-old Maliek Francis who claimed gold in the boys javelin event at the NACAC Championships in July, Cornelius believes that with all the necessary things in place, a number of these athletes could challenge for places at the 2028 Olympics.
“We have young Daley [Ajarni] and he is doing good and the same young lady we were in discussions with, she is showing potential. We have Cleon and other young athletes coming up and we hope that once they stay the course we can see some improvement. I am not going to say for this coming Olympics [2024] but I think that by the next Olympics that once they stay the course, we should see some good performances going forward. This year would be a very good indication as to where we are with the development of our junior athletes,” he said.
However, Cornelius — a former national athlete — believes that track and field at the junior level was at its pinnacle some eight years ago and he’s hoping it could return there some day.
“I hope we can get back to where we were in 2015 and 2016 when we had Miguel Francis and all those guys around and they were shining. There was Miguel, Tahir Walsh, Bakka [Daniel Bailey], Cejhae Greene, Shark [Jared Jarvis] and Walsh [Chevaughn], so we had at least five good athletes and we were making some waves,” he said.
Asked about the level of growth in the field events, Cornelius admitted that coaches don’t place much emphasis on those areas of the sport.
“I think everybody is sort of fascinated by sprints. So, everybody comes and wants to be a sprinter in terms of 100 to 400 and very few people will venture into the 800 or 1500 meters. When it comes to the field events, I see more people now showing an interest and especially from the female end of it. I see a few females come out and they were throwing the javelin and the shot put,” the athletics boss said.
Young sprinter Kasiya Daley also had good performances at the NACAC Championships in July, clocking 10.56 seconds to win the under-18 boys 100 meters event while Dwayne Fleming bagged bronze with a time of 10.69 seconds.
