- PHOTO BY PAUL-ANDRE WALKER
Jamaica's boys water polo team before departing for the Pan-American Youth Championships in Mexico yesterday.
Paul-Andre Walker, Staff Reporter
JAMAICA'S 26-MEMBER water polo team left the island yesterday on their way to the Pan-American Youth Champion-ships in Mexico City, Mexico, for what national coach Laszlo Borbely calls a 'learning experience'.
Using teams made up almost solely of players from the recently held Schools Water Polo Tournament, Borbely doesn't expect the teams to do well but realises the competition is important to give the young players insight into what they have to do to become an international force.
"I've chosen young people who have never really played water polo before. I've coached them for a month and a half and now they are going to compete in a tournament that produces the highest level of play in the Western Hemisphere," Borbely explained.
SOME PLAYERS TOO OLD
"I don't expect a lot from them performance-wise. What I expect is that they will stick with water polo and that they will see from an early age what it is like to play at the highest level. Then I will have them for the next three to five years and we'll have a goal that we can work towards," added Borbely.
Last year Borbely took a contingent of players to El Salvador for the Pan-Am Youth Cham-pionships. However, some of them are now too old to play age-group water polo while others have gone overseas on scholarships. That is the main reason Borbely decided to take a team where the players are between 14 and 15 years old.
The players themselves are elated at being given the chance to see what water polo is like on an international scale and think that the experience will serve their long-term goals well.
"We hope to gain as much experience as possible because we are a young team and we need that experience to see what we can achieve.
LOOKING TO NEXT OLYMPICS
We are looking to get to the next Olympics and maybe in other competitions we can apply what we learn there," explained St. George's player and captain of the boys' team Jamie Smith.
The same sentiment was expressed by the girls' captain, Campion College's Mary Chambers.
"This is going to be a very hard competition because it is the first major competition for most of the team but we have the speed and the talent so we should do well," Chambers said.
"The experience should give us a head start on all the other teams in the competitions for this coming year. The ultimate goal though is the World Championships and the 2008 Olympics," she said.
The tournament starts tomorrow and runs until next Sunday.
