MONTEGO BAY, St James – THE Institute of Sports (INSPORTS), in collaboration with the Jamaica Table Tennis Association (JTTA), has embarked on a programme aimed at positioning table tennis as one of the premier sporting disciplines in western Jamaica.

According to JTTA President Godfrey Lothian, the initiative includes the staging of international table tennis tournaments in Montego Bay, where overseas players will compete against locals.

Lothian was speaking to the Jamaica Observer West during the inaugural staging of the two-day Jamaica Open Winter Table Tennis tournament held at the Montego Bay Community College auditorium recently.

More than 200 international and local table tennis players participated in the tournament, which was officially opened by Natalie Headley Neita, the minister with responsibility for sports.

“We believe that Kingston and St Andrew is not Jamaica, so therefore, we didn’t think of staging this thing [Jamaica Winter Open] in the National Arena. We decided to bring it here,” Lothian said. “The Jamaica Winter Open is a concept where we are now looking at how we can bring down international players to Jamaica to get them to play with our local players so we can improve the standards of the local players, because we recognise that over many years the standard of the Jamaican players has dropped significantly,” he explained.

He said that over the next few months the association plans to have dialogue with mayors across western Jamaica to see “how best we can get the involvement of the various communities in the sport”.

“We will be saying to them [mayors] how can we partner with you? We have table tennis boards and volunteers, so we will be seeing how they can partner with us in the various cities and towns to ensure that we have tournaments and unearth the talents that exist. This is a part of the new paradigm shift that the Jamaica Table Tennis Association has taken to ensure that table tennis will be in the top-five sport disciplines,” said Lothian, who has been president of the JTTA for close to two years.

Meanwhile, Jerry Reid, INSPORTS officer for St James, said his organisation will, as of next month, begin to make contact with schools across the western region in an effort to get them involved in the sport.

“When we visit the schools we are going

to get in touch with the physical education teachers and coaches, talk with them, maybe run some seminars and let them understand that we will need their involvement in the sport, and from there we will get some table tennis competitions going and from there we believe that the sport will grow,” Reid said.

He noted that students at all levels will be targeted. “We will be looking at the preparatory schools, primary schools, all-age schools and high schools,” he said, adding that already table tennis coach Peter Tomlinson has agreed to assist with the programme.

Reid said INSPORTS will be lobbying the Government and the JTTA to assist in the provision of table tennis boards and other equipment for the schools.

Western Jamaica has produced a number of outstanding table tennis players including Courtney Wilson and Ian Spencer.

Reid believes, however, that inadequate table tennis boards and other equipment have resulted in a lack of participation in the sport in the region.