By Neto Baptiste
National women’s sprinter Joella Lloyd believes that with more emphasis on development, Antigua and Barbuda could produce more collegiate and even professional track and field athletes.
Speaking recently on the Good Morning Jojo Sports Show, Lloyd said the ability to first identify the talent is a key part of the process.
“First, emphasise scouting, finding the talent and then having it where a coach will pick up that talent you have. Keeping [maintaining] Inter-schools, nationals at such a caliber that athletes would want to step up when it comes to these meets, so they could get good times and universities can see them and be interested,” she said.
“The bigger incentives would be going to Carifta and other meets as you keep them engaged in the sport. Also making the transition to collegiate or even professional as easy as possible like helping them out financially if they need anything or by having relationships with coaches [overseas] where they could say, we have an athlete who is doing well, and then the coach could pick them up from there,” she added.
Lloyd, who currently holds the 100 meters record with a time of 11.19 seconds and the 200 record of 23.09 seconds, is however hoping that with the emergence of talents like LaNica Locker, Geolyna Dowdy and Sonia Jones, the country could be in a position to field a 4×1 relay team in the near future.
“I feel like we’ll have a chance next year to have a relay team that would represent the Wadadli Girls on the track, and if everybody could get their times down then we could possibly make world and hopefully the Olympics. I would love it because I’ve never been on an Olympic relay team and I really like relays and having that team camaraderie,” the athlete said.
Lloyd currently attends the University of Tennessee.
