Barbados hosts NextPlay Girls

Women’s football in Barbados took another step in the right direction recently when the Barbados Football Association hosted the Concacaf NextPlay Girls.

Coming hot on the heels of the recently-held 2019 edition of the Concacaf NextPlay Cup, where All Saints Primary repeated as champions, over 100 girls from several local primary schools got a taste of the beautiful game.

With many of the girls aged between six and 12 coming into contact with the sport for the first time ever, they were all taken through the fundamentals of the game by Concacaf women’s coaches who were assisted by members of the Barbados senior women’s team.

This particular iteration of the programme was geared specifically towards girls and was opened and overseen by FIFA and Concacaf Council Member and President of the Turks and Caicos Football Association, Sonia Fulford-Missick, and Head of Concacaf Women’s Football, Karina LeBlanc, who both played football and had wise words of encouragement for the young players.

The youngsters were advised to stick with the game as there were many opportunities and avenues to create a career such as through playing, coaching and administration.

Technical Director of the Barbados Football Association, Ahmed Mohamed, told The Barbados Advocate that this initiative was a long time in coming, but could not think of a better time to have it executed as the plan was to create a Girls’ league for Under-9 and Under-11 players at some point in time next year.

“Hopefully we get a good crop of girls out of this that stick with the game so we can move forward to strengthen the pool of female players,” he said.
(MP)