By Neto Baptiste
The segregated departure of the country’s track & field team to Grenada for this weekend’s Carifta Games, should not negatively impact the performance of the athletes.
This is according to head coach and a member of the Antigua and Barbuda Athletics Association (ABAA), Teddy Daley, who said the team will leave in two separate groups between Wednesday (March 27) and Thursday (March 28).
“We try to make sure that those athletes participating on Saturday would be the ones who are leaving so they would have enough time to get over any jitters and we have a little training session at the track so they have enough time because Grenada is not too far,” he said.
The former national athlete explained that the separated departure of the team is due to the late securing of funds for the purchase of tickets and accommodation.
“Remember we started late, we got out of the gates late but I think we are still in a good place. The first group is going to leave [Wednesday] afternoon and the rest of the athletes and the officials will be leaving [Thursday]. Flights were difficult to arrange but we managed to organise flights for everybody to go and come back. We incurred a little extra expense because some people were not able to come back on the scheduled time and so the accommodation provided by the local organizing committee for Carifta would have ended and they are going to have to stay overnight in Barbados going and coming so we are going to have to pay for that,” Daley said.
The coach also revealed that the team will be without promising high-jumper, Nicholas Simpson, whose Jamaican passport could not be renewed on time.
“He didn’t get the passport; all the efforts we made proved to be unsuccessful. The standard of high-jumping in Carifta is quite high and Simpson was the other person. The second person would have been Kasiya and Kasiya can’t run the 4×1, 4×4 to 200 and still the high jump,” he said.
The Carifta Games are slated to run from March 30 to April 1.
Squad: Tyra Fenton, Zonique Charles, Gerilin Barnes, Maliek Francis, Geolyna Dowdye, La’Nica Locker, Hannah Charles, Alyssa Dyett, Ajani Daley, Nicardo Clarke, Kasiya Daley, Osei Gardner, Kevon Campbell, Caandre Pascal, Dwayne Fleming and Cleon Joseph.