Members, management and support staff of the successful Barbados Karate Team take time out for a photo in the Arrivals area of the Grantley Adams International Airport.
Karate team returns with big medal haul
Fri, 07/29/2016 - 12:00am
The Barbados Shotokan Karate team turned in an outstanding performance after dragging home 43 medals from the recently-concluded Caribbean Karate Championships. With the tournament running from July 18th to 23rd in Jamaica, the 21-member team ended high in the medal tally as they came away with 26 Gold, 10 Silver and seven Bronze.
Returning from the championship in high spirits late on Monday night, the relatively-young team had quite a few standout performances with the likes of Asha Stevenson, Nicholas Blackman, Kodi King, Reann Barker, Tia Archer and Sheridan Greaves, to name a few, snapping up multiple medals. Deputy Director of the National Sports Council, Neil Murrell was on hand to meet the team on their return and he offered his congratulations and thanks on behalf of the Ministry and made special mention of the young members and their support system.
“As young people, what you should learn from this particular exercise is that you have it within you to do even better. You have gone to the Caribbean level and you have conquered and this should now give you the impetus to conquer at another level. That entails a lot of hard work, it entails a lot of support and at this juncture, I want to give the management of the team and the parents who would have supported you in this venture gratitude.”
The Barbados Karate Association now sets its sights on the future as the island will be playing host to the World Championships in 2018. Noting that the make-up of the team was largely inexperienced due to many of the more-senior karatekas having other commitments, Team Coach, Neil Skeete said that the delegation did well and that he was proud of them.
“We picked up 43 medals and that is really good for a very young team. They did very well, everybody stuck to the task. There were some hiccups here and there in terms of the execution of the tournament but everything went well. They represented Barbados very well so now we are looking forward to 2018,” he said.
With Skeete also putting in a call for many former karatekas to fall back into the fold ahead of the championship, he stated that all of the participating territories were keen and excited to come to Barbados and that he hoped for the backing of the Barbados Tourism Marketing Inc and the Ministry as a huge turnout was expected. (MP)