We only have ‘Table Tennis sweaters’ in SVG – Stanley

Training once per week, will not cut it, if St Vincent and the Grenadines’ Table Tennis players want to be competitive on the regional or international stage.

That is the view of Sean Stanley, Public Relations Officer of the St Vincent and the Grenadines Table Tennis Association, and coach of SVG’s Table Tennis team to the XXII Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, England.

Candid in his assessment of the current crop of players, Stanley described them as “sweaters”.

“In our country, what we have now is mainly Table Tennis sweaters,” Stanley analysed.

Expounding on the terminology, Stanley added: “Table Tennis sweaters are people who come on Saturdays and take a sweat (whereas) Table Tennis players are people who play four times per week and put in at least ten hours per week”.

Stanley thus commented that the attitude may stem from being placed in a comfort zone, given the relatively small number of players St Vincent and the Grenadines possesses.

“We tend to put in less time and probably among ourselves we figure that we are up there, because we are winning locally with our two hours or three hours input per week,” Stanley stated.

He however noted, “But if you want to compete you have to put in eight to ten hours per week”.

Stanley, though, thinks changes can come about if proper dialogue is held with parents of the young players.

“There must be dialogue with parents…They have to decide if they want them to be Table Tennis players or not, whether they want to be Table Tennis players or Table Tennis sweaters,” Stanley advised.

Despite his concerns about the general lax attitude towards training, Stanley believes that a bright future is ahead of the present active players in the sport, who are mainly teenagers, but reiterated that they must be willing “to put in the hours”.