Newly elected president of Americas Netball, Trinidadian Dr. Bridget Adams, is looking to build on the legacy of outgoing president Marva Bernard.
Dr Adams, the secretary of the last administration, was elected unopposed to the top job at Saturday’s Annual General Meeting and election of officers held at the Liguanea Club in New Kingston.
Bernard did not seek re-election but will continue to sit on the executive as regional director until Netball World Cup in South Africa next year.
The new administration is completed by Jamaica’s Simone Forbes as first vice-president; Shirley Benjamin of Antigua and Barbuda is the new secretary; Jacintha Ballentine of St Vincent and the Grenadines was returned as treasurer, as well as Javon Edwards of St Marteen as second vice-president.
Allied to continuing the projects started by the previous administration, which was aimed at improving the sport in the region, Dr Adams also wants to reduce the gap between Jamaica and the other countries in the region.
“We have started working on several projects, governance, umpiring, coaching, table officiating, high performance and so on and there are some new ones that we would like to do,” declared Dr Adams.
“We would like to look at the development of the region and in developing the region we will be looking at Under-14s, Under-16s, Under-19s going right up because recently it was announced at the Commonwealth Games that we will have a 14-19 age-group Fast Five tournament in Trinidad & Tobago and so we do not play Fast 5 in that age group so we need to have a program where we play Fast 5 a little more often so the players will be familiar with what Fast 5 is about.”
She said that there is a lot of work to do and she will be getting the members on board in order to achieve the objectives. Dr Adams also credited Bernard for leading the way over the past four years, especially during the period of the intense Covid-19 pandemic.
Meanwhile, Forbes, a former Jamaica Sunshine Girls skipper, said she as looking forward to helping grow the sport in a meaningful way.
“Two things I would love to see happen, grass-roots netball development and playing more competitive netball in the region and of course the athletes having a voice, more player-centered and game-centered.”
On reflection of her stewardship of Americas Netball, Bernard said she thought the administration did its best with the resources at its disposal. “We used the development funds that World Netball gave us to upskill our members until when the pandemic lifted and so we would be in a better position to administer sport in the countries.
“We trained coaches, we trained umpires, we trained future leaders, we also did a seven-session in high-performance systems and structures and we brought experts from New Zealand to help us.”
The areas that she thought more could have been done were increasing the number of umpires and completing the website for the region.
