Aaron Ed­wards, coach of this coun­try’s se­nior team at the just con­clud­ed 62nd Caribbean Ta­ble Ten­nis Fed­er­a­tion Se­nior Cham­pi­onship at the Pab­ex­po Col­i­se­um, in Ha­vana, Cu­ba has called for an ur­gent re­turn of na­tion­al train­ing pro­grammes.

Ed­wards, a for­mer na­tion­al play­er him­self made the call af­ter this coun­try failed to medal in the sev­en cat­e­gories of the com­pe­ti­tion.

These in­clude the Men and Women Team com­pe­ti­tions, men and women Sin­gles, as well as Mixed Dou­bles, Women’s Dou­bles and Men’s Dou­bles.

In the Teams com­pe­ti­tion, T&T men and women both failed to ad­vance from their re­spec­tive round-robin pools.

The T&T women, ten-time cham­pi­ons T&T was rep­re­sent­ed by France-based Rheann Chung, Chloe Fras­er and Imani Ed­wards-Tay­lor and went un­der to Guyana 2-3 with a semi­fi­nal spot at stake af­ter both teams tast­ed de­feat against pool win­ner Puer­to Ri­co.

The lo­cal men’s team of USA-based Khaleel As­gar­ali, Aaron Wil­son, Der­ron Dou­glas and Joshua Maxwell end­ed third in Group One af­ter a lone win over Ja­maica 3-0 fol­low­ing loss­es against pool win­ners Puer­to Ri­co (3-0) and the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic (3-1) in a de­ci­sive clash for the sec­ond spot.

The sev­en lo­cal play­ers all failed to get out of their re­spec­tive round-robin pools, with five-time sin­gles cham­pi­on Chung, 37, a ma­jor dis­ap­point­ment as well as 34-year-old Agar­ali, the two most se­nior mem­bers of the team.

In the Dou­bles, Chung and Wil­son reached the Mixed Dou­bles quar­ter­fi­nals while Fras­er and Dou­glas were beat­en in their open­ing round-of-16 match.

The pair of Chung and Fras­er al­so reached the women’s Dou­bles last-eight while in the men’s Dou­bles, Dou­glas and Wil­son al­so reached the quar­ter­fi­nals, and the pair of As­gar­ali and Maxwell bowed out at the first hur­dle.

The re­turn of no medals marked the first time the team end­ed emp­ty­hand­ed at a se­nior re­gion­al cham­pi­on in more than a decade lead­ing coach Ed­wards to call for an ur­gent need for train­ing camps for the promis­ing play­ers

Re­flect­ing on the team’s dis­mal dis­play, Ed­wards said he thinks sev­er­al things af­fect­ed the team’s per­for­mances in Cu­ba

“First­ly, this was our first in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion in the past three years as we have not been in­volved in any com­pe­ti­tion re­gion­al­ly or in­ter­na­tion­al­ly as a team or as play­ers be­sides, Chung and As­gar­ali, who are both based out­side of the T&T.

“Every­one else has been more or less not com­pet­ing at all as we haven’t had any lo­cal tour­na­ments as well oth­er than the few host­ed by some clubs re­cent­ly, main­ly WASA and Queen’s Park Ta­ble Ten­nis Club.

“So go­ing in­to the tour­na­ment in terms of prepa­ra­tion we were al­ready be­hind the eight-ball.

He added,” Then we had a very young team with 13-year-old Chloe Fras­er and 16-year-old Imani Ed­wards-Tay­lor in the women, and we are hop­ing now that we can have our main­stream women play­ers like Brit­tany Joseph and Cather­ine Spicer back in­volved soon be­cause mov­ing for­ward I think they are two very im­por­tant play­ers for us.

“We al­so have the next young group with Fras­er and Imani at the fore­front and oth­er young­sters like Shreya Maraj and Priyan­ka Khellawa who have been

top per­form­ers at past youth Caribbean com­pe­ti­tions.

“So, as an as­so­ci­a­tion, we have to find a way to get all those play­ers who were show­ing and have been show­ing all that promise at a young age back in­to a na­tion­al pro­gram and have them train­ing at least four to five hours per day

for five days per week, and then on­ly we will see our game start back to pick up and be where it be­longs,” stat­ed Ed­wards.

“For the men, we al­so have a crop of young play­ers com­ing through led by Aaron Wil­son, Arun Roop­nar­ine, and Der­ron Dou­glas, and in­clu­sive of Joshua Maxwell, Javie King, Abra­ham Fran­cis, Luc O’Young, N’kosi Rouse and a cou­ple of oth­ers who we need to put in­to train­ing camps as soon as pos­si­ble and re­build our pro­gram from scratch.

“We do have the tal­ent, but at the same time we know the tal­ent is not all, and we need to put in the work and as an ad­min­is­tra­tion, we al­so need to put things in place for the play­ers so that they will be able to com­pete at these lev­els with­out hav­ing to wor­ry about any oth­er thing than ta­ble-ten­nis it­self.

Not want­i­ng to put a time­frame on when we will be­gin to reap the re­wards of the camps and pro­grams, Ed­wards em­pha­sised, “Suc­cess for us is not go­ing to hap­pen overnight, and it’s not like long­time when those oth­er Caribbean coun­tries were just play­ing at home.

They now have their play­ers in train­ing camps in places like Ger­many, Por­tu­gal and Swe­den for three months as well as com­pet­ing in leagues out­side of their coun­try, so it's no longer a lev­el play­ing field for us where com­pe­ti­tion and prepa­ra­tions are con­cerned.”

Re­flect­ing on the com­pe­ti­tion, Ed­wards said, “hose coun­tries that we com­pet­ed against like Puer­to Ri­co, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic and Cu­ba, they are no longer fo­cus­ing on the Caribbean Cham­pi­onship,

“Their main goal now is medalling at Pan Am Games, and World Cham­pi­onship, while we in T&T are still just fo­cus­ing on the Caribbean com­pe­ti­tions and podi­um fin­ish­es.

“The Puer­to Ri­cans, that’s not even their strongest team as they were with­out their top two play­ers, one be­ing ranked 13th in the world, Adri­ana Di­az, 20, and her sis­ter Melanie Di­az, 25, ranked in the top 50, so it's no longer a fight to be the best in the re­gion, a lot of coun­tries are now well ahead of us and for us to get back the glo­ry days we have to put all these things in­to con­sid­er­a­tion and try and get as much of our play­ers out­side play­ing and train­ing at in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el.

"Our lo­cal pro­gram needs to get start­ed as soon as pos­si­ble. We have the Lev­el III coach­es here in the coun­try who are will­ing to put in the work to help the sport move for­ward, and we are al­so will­ing to work with in­ter­na­tion­al coach­es if the op­por­tu­ni­ty aris­es, but we need to start to do things dif­fer­ent­ly," end­ed Ed­wards.

Host coun­try, Cu­ba won all sev­en gold medals at stake in the com­pe­ti­tion.