By Neto Baptiste
Newly elected head of the Antigua and Barbuda Softball Cricket Association (ABSCA), Mandy Weatherhead, is on a mission to attract younger players to the game during his two-year tenure at the helm.
In order to achieve his goal, Weatherhead said he intends to seek an audience with the hierarchy within the Ministry of Sports in an effort to have the game introduced into the country’s schools as a form of attracting younger players who may still have a fear for the hardball version of the game.
“The average age right now is 40 and 50 and we even have a few persons who are 60 and up so my main thing is to get softball back up again and especially to get more young people involved, especially in the schools. I already spoke to persons in the community that deals with cricket clubs in terms of organising. If it takes that I have to sit down to have a talk with the ministry … even if it has to go to the Minister of Sports [Daryll Matthew] because we have to find a way to get schools involved. Some of our players started playing at the softball level so we just have to find a way to let it happen,” he said.
The sports enthusiast who is the organiser of the successful Mandy Premier League or MPL Softball Cricket tournament, highlighted a number of other areas of concern, adding that he will first seek to provide training for his young but vibrant executive.
“It’s a young executive so some of the folks are inexperienced and I’ve already organised an executive training session as the first thing. We have met and discussed some of the things and some of the issues that plague softball for the last set of years. First, we’re short of umpires and we’ve discussed ways and means of getting past umpires to come back and give some assistance. There are some venue issues and also some of the rules that were not implemented that caused some concerns; we looked at those as well,” he said.
Weatherhead was elected during the body’s electoral congress held January 16 at the Post Millennial Academy on All Saints Road.
The other members of his executive are Walter Carr (Vice President), Menova Govia (Secretary), Sacha Michael (Assistant Secretary), Robin Valgobin (Treasurer), Tiwana John (Assistant Treasurer), Baldwin Anthony (PRO), Mervin Higgins, Gale Lee, Nigel Fergus (Floor Members).