By Neto Baptiste
President of the Antigua and Barbuda Netball Association (ABNA) and former national goal shoot, Karen Joseph, has renewed her call for the YMCA Sports Complex, the country’s premier netball venue, to be brought under the body’s control.
Her call comes on the heels of the country’s successful hosting of the ECCB International Netball Series held from September 9 to October 8 at the YMCA.
“Now that we have YMCA fixed I would just really love for the government to give netball YMCA and people can curse but I don’t care, but YMCA needs to be the home of netball. We fix it every time and when we fix it they take back up the netball poles and put down basketball poles in there and they gone again. Basketball has JSC but we don’t have anywhere so we need to keep YMCA for netball and that’s the only how we can get teams to come to Antigua to play,” she said.
The venue underwent major upgrades prior to the start of the tournament with government spearheading repairs to some stands, courts, lighting, bathroom facilities and more.
Joseph said the association would be in a position to do some form of maintenance at the venue but added there must be better day-to-day management.
“If you get proper caretakers and people to take care of YMCA it can be done; we just need to take care of the place. We have a problem with maintenance in Antigua. When I was passing there [recently] I saw one of the gates open and I had to stop and make sure it was okay. We had vagrants in there sleeping when we were going there with the prisoners [to clean] prior to the start of the tournament. People used in there like a toilet so now that we have the place, we have to keep it,” she said.
The venue, which houses two netball courts and one basketball court, was in need of repairs ahead of the tournament. Photos of filthy, broken down bathrooms, dirty stands and broken fence were being widely circulated.
However, the government, through the Ministry of Works, facilitated its rehabilitation in time for the successful hosting of the tournament in which the Antigua and Barbuda Wadadli Girls finished third.