WAL­TER AL­IBEY

wal­ter.al­ibey@guardian.co.tt

De­spite not get­ting the type of prepa­ra­tion they were hop­ing for or need­ed, the coun­try’s ju­nior box­ers per­formed ex­cel­lent­ly over the past week­end at the Caribbean School­boys and School­girls Box­ing Cham­pi­onships in George­town, Guyana, re­turn­ing home with four sil­ver medals and a bronze.

Yes­ter­day Ce­cil Forde, pres­i­dent of the T&T Box­ing As­so­ci­a­tion was high in praise of the box­ers, re­mind­ing the pub­lic that their achieve­ment came at a time when a two-year shut­down of the sport due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, pre­vent­ed them from box­ing.

This, cou­pled with the fact that there was no box­ing board for the past few months, al­so sought to ham­per the team’s prepa­ra­tion, the vet­er­an sports ad­min­is­tra­tor ex­plained.

A six-mem­ber team of Joshua Lewis, Paul Math­ew Newal­lo- the son of for­mer Di­rec­tor of Sports in the Min­istry of Sports Paul Newal­lo, Chris Per­sad, Ner­aj Ma­hadeosingh, Prince Charles and Sha­nia Nunez left last week Thurs­day with no pri­or ex­pe­ri­ence in com­pet­i­tive box­ing, yet re­turned home with sil­ver medals from Charles, Per­sad, Newal­lo and Lewis. Ma­hadeosingh was the lone bronze medal win­ner, while Nunez, the on­ly fe­male box­er on the team did not get com­pe­ti­tion in her di­vi­sion.

Con­test­ing the fi­nal of the light­weight di­vi­sion, in­ex­pe­ri­ence showed as Charles went down on points to home­town favourite Joshua Tham­baran, while Per­sad al­so suf­fered in the light wel­ter­weight fi­nal when he was beat­en by Sean Gra­ham who was al­so from Guyana.

Newal­lo, al­so suc­cumbed to a more ex­pe­ri­enced Guyanese fight­er Garu­el Hy­man in the wel­ter­weight di­vi­sion fi­nal for his sil­ver medal, and Lewis went down to St Lu­cian Key­berl Sim­i­lien al­so on points.

Mean­while, Ma­hadeosingh’s bronze medal in the feath­er­weight di­vi­sion came al­though he was beat­en in the semi­fi­nal by Jaylen Young of the Ba­hamas.

Forde not­ed the achieve­ments of the box­ers have been a tremen­dous en­cour­age­ment for his as­so­ci­a­tion and the box­ers will con­tin­ue to pre­pare at the Cos­mic Box­ing Gym in Mara­bel­la.

“This means that the achieve­ment came with­out any con­tests /fights. We thank all those clubs/coach­es and box­ers who par­tic­i­pat­ed in our train­ing/spar­ring ses­sions that were the nu­cle­us for our suc­cess. Go­ing for­ward, our pro­gram con­tin­ues this Sat­ur­day 3 Sep­tem­ber 2022 when our Youth and Fe­male teams would con­tin­ue with their prepa­ra­tion. It is es­sen­tial for all youth box­ers 17 and 18 years old to join us. Coach­es have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to give their ath­letes op­por­tu­ni­ties to be part of our na­tion­al teams.”