Sybil Walling: I did not do it for awards

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By Neto Baptiste

Former national netballer and regional administrator, Sybil Walling, said the time she dedicated to the sport and country came as a result of the love and passion she had for both – and requires no form of recognition in return.

Speaking on the Good Morning Jojo sports show, Walling, who pioneered the forming of the national association in the mid-70s to early 80s, said she is not too concerned with getting any form of acknowledgement for her contribution.

“Who worries about those things? I don’t worry about those things so they don’t bother me. I don’t think I’ve even gotten an Independence award but it doesn’t bother me.

“The point is that whatever I am trying to do I want to see it done well and I want to see the folks who are to benefit from it, benefit and I am not speaking about financially but benefit in terms of their personality, their attitude, image and that kind of thing.

“Representing themselves, family and country well and that’s something I am very firm about because I feel we owe it to the younger people and we owe it to the people who will need it as life goes on,” she said.

Walling, who is also a past president of the Caribbean Netball Association (CNA), said she wants to be remembered as someone who was committed and gave from the heart.

“I would like to be remembered as being honest, fair and helpful to the people with whom I am involved but if I wasn’t in some way helped by someone then I wouldn’t have gotten a scholarship to do something and I certainly would not have been the woman I became.

“I think that is something we all owe to the people around us. We have to give them some guidance and some of them will react but even if it is 10 years down the road, they are going to remember,” she said.

Walling was born in Montserrat but migrated to Antigua at the age of four. She orchestrated the country’s participation in the 1983 World Netball Championships held in Singapore.

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