Secretary’s presence on the executive not good for the sport, says Tennis President

President of the St Vincent and the Grenadines Table Tennis Association, Sean Stanley, who has been under the gun over his leadership style has been playing down the issue as a personal attack.

He is dismissing the charges stating he has the full support of the other executive members, except the secretary Julian Sutherland.{{more}}

Referring to Sutherland, Stanley believes that the secretary’s presence on the executive is not good for the sport and its progress.

“Some people get into organisations for different purposes, and it amazes me why someone should move so quickly from a darling to a villain”, Stanley alleged.

Stanley said his detractors ought instead to look at the tremendous strides the sport has made under his leadership.

Revealing a string of achievements, Stanley said that the progress made in table tennis over recent times is unsurpassed.

“We have a continuous programme at the foundation level for children from 7-17 years old”. Under my leadership, we have acquired the use of the Old Government Printery in Kingstown; We have received five new table tennis boards from the International Table Tennis Federation and two scholarships for Under-13 players Luke Velox and Daryl Dickson to attend the high yield training in Santo Domingo from October 25 to November 5,” Stanley pointed out.

To the area of coaching, the table tennis president listed the recent appointment of three more level one coaches to add to the seven already reaching that stage.

Stanley stated that his organization is heading in the right direction with ensuring that the sport is spread island wide.

“The fact that we have two coaches stationed at the printery every day, shows we are developing table tennis from an early age”, he said.

He singled his influence in getting Kendall Charles to return to the sport after over twenty years as a plus in his remarks column.

Charles earlier this year attended a high performance course in Trinidad and Tobago and is among the newly assigned coaches.

Stanley is bubbling that the Kingstown Preparatory School has made table tennis a part of its Physical Education Programme.

“A successful sports camp held in August and the return of the national junior championships after many years speak for itself”, remarked Stanley a former national and OECS singles champion.

“We are staging the national open championships from next Monday and our coaching caravan will continue following the completion of the competition”, Stanley said.

He said that the Caribbean Regional Table Tennis Federation is fully supportive of the coaching caravan, and was endorsed in at a meeting in Puerto Rico last August.