12 hours ago
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BY NEXT weekend, it is expected that Karen Baugh will assume the presidency of Netball Jamaica and she wants to tackle one of the perennial issues successive administrations have grappled with – the proper structurisation of parish associations and competitions.
Baugh, who is expected to be elected unopposed at the association’s next annual general meeting on July 5, said it is a sore issue that her administration is hoping to improve.
However, she noted that multiple administrations have tried but have not been successful in getting to a situation of fully functioning parish associations.
She acknowledged that it will not be easy, but said her new slate will give the parishes all the help they need to get up to speed.
“We started building out the structure years ago with parish organisations, and that has not developed at the pace it needs to, to feed a national programme and make sure grassroots netball is getting attention as well. So that definitely will be one of the areas of focus.
“It is a challenge. I am not going to pretend we are going to just walk in and put structures all over the country.
“Some [parishes] have started and some have fledgling organisations. Some have remnants of what was there before. But parish associations, if and where they existed, are associated members of Netball Jamaica. We just really have to find dedicated people in each parish,” he stated.
She insists it is not a problem that they can fix overnight, and that they will look to strengthen those that already exist, then try to get others off the ground.
“We won’t try to do everything at once. We have to be strategic and figure out which area we will branch out in first.
“For example, Hanover has been very active and wants to get going and have started putting their team together.
“So we just need to find a few more parishes and work with them, one at a time; help them to build out their structure, and then take it from there.”
She added also that they will continue to offer courses to train and improve local umpires and coaches.
“We have to do some work on our umpiring, to build out a team of umpires for the game, because the game cannot be played without umpires.
“We have started some work with coaching and [Vice-President] Simone Forbes has done a lot of work in that area, working to build out our Level One, Level Two, and Level Three programmes.
“There is also the structure of our clubs, because that is where our members come from, and we want to make sure that they have developmental opportunities as well.”
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