Thir­teen-time na­tion­al women’s ta­ble ten­nis sin­gles cham­pi­on Aleena Ed­wards is cur­rent­ly con­duct­ing a ten-day train­ing camp for Grena­da’s top 20 un­der-23 ta­ble ten­nis play­ers.

Ed­wards, an In­ter­na­tion­al Ta­ble Ten­nis Fed­er­a­tion (IT­TF) Re­gion­al Ex­pert, be­gan the camp on Tues­day, Ju­ly 15, at the Youth Cen­tre, which is be­ing host­ed by the Grena­da Ta­ble Ten­nis As­so­ci­a­tion (GT­TA) in Morne Rouge in St George’s.

The camp is spon­sored by the IT­TF and forms part of the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s re­gion­al de­vel­op­ment ini­tia­tive.

Coach Ed­wards is an IT­TF Lev­el 3 cer­ti­fied coach with more than 30 years of ex­pe­ri­ence in the sport—first as a top na­tion­al play­er and now as a re­spect­ed coach, ed­u­ca­tor, and sports ad­min­is­tra­tor.

She cur­rent­ly coach­es one of the Caribbean’s lead­ing ju­niors, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da’s world-ranked play­er Stu­ti Kashyap.

Ed­wards is al­so a uni­ver­si­ty lec­tur­er and high-per­for­mance coach who has worked ex­ten­sive­ly through­out the re­gion, help­ing na­tion­al as­so­ci­a­tions de­vel­op their cadet, ju­nior and se­nior ath­letes.

She has coached sev­er­al teams at Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (CAC) Games, Pan Amer­i­can Games, and Caribbean Ta­ble Ten­nis Fed­er­a­tion Cham­pi­onships.

As a for­mer na­tion­al cham­pi­on, Ed­wards boasts an un­matched record in T&T—win­ning the na­tion­al women’s sin­gles ti­tle 13 times, more than any oth­er play­er, in ei­ther the men’s or women’s gen­der—while she is al­so a six-time Caribbean se­nior women’s team cham­pi­on.

Her in­ter­na­tion­al play­ing ré­sumé in­cludes rep­re­sent­ing T&T at three Com­mon­wealth Games and IT­TF World Cham­pi­onships held in Man­ches­ter, Mel­bourne, and Glas­gow.

She has al­so un­der­gone elite-lev­el train­ing in Chi­na, Swe­den and Cu­ba.

In ad­di­tion to her coach­ing cre­den­tials, Ed­wards holds qual­i­fi­ca­tions in ap­plied sport and ex­er­cise psy­chol­o­gy, sports man­age­ment, and ath­lete de­vel­op­ment.

“Coach Ed­wards is ex­cit­ed to work with Grena­di­an play­ers and coach­es, hav­ing ob­served many of the is­land’s ju­niors in Caribbean com­pe­ti­tions,’’ the GT­TA said. “She be­lieves the 60-hour in­ten­sive train­ing pro­gram will el­e­vate their skills and game aware­ness.’’

The GT­TA has wel­comed Ed­wards’ vis­it, de­scrib­ing it as “time­ly and trans­for­ma­tion­al. Her ex­per­tise will be in­valu­able in help­ing lo­cal play­ers reach the next lev­el.’’

This IT­TF Train­ing Camp is part of the Caribbean Re­gion­al De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme un­der co­or­di­na­tors Car­los Manuel Es­nard and Luisana Perez and is one of sev­er­al ini­tia­tives de­signed to ad­vance the sport through­out the re­gion.

This is not the first such out­ing for Ed­wards, as in 2023 she was the IT­TF re­gion­al ex­pert for St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, where she did an IT­TF De­vel­op­ing Mem­ber Ac­tiv­i­ty, which was to cer­ti­fy their coach­es in IT­TF-PTT Lev­el 1 Coach­ing Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and then coach their na­tion­al ath­letes and teams.

She then trav­elled to An­tigua and Bar­bu­da that same year in Oc­to­ber for an­oth­er De­vel­op­ing Mem­ber As­so­ci­a­tion ac­tiv­i­ty, where she al­so did a Na­tion­al Coach­ing Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for their lo­cal coach­es and phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion teach­ers and their na­tion­al play­ers.