KINGSTON, Jamaica — The Jamaica Table Tennis Association (JTTA) has embarked on a mission to uplift the standard of the national programme with the hunt for Jamaicans in the Diaspora, who are interested in donning the national colours.

According to president, Andrew Lue, in an interview with OBSERVER ONLINE, the JTTA will be following the footsteps of other sports, which have used overseas-born Jamaicans to aid the national programme.

“All sport do that and we are not excluding ourselves from that process. Wherever we can get the talent because sports ride on success, so if we can get a player of a good standard, we will consider inviting them to try out for the national squad.

“I am optimistic and I am hoping to bolster the local programme with some overseas talent, if I can find them,” Lue said.

Lue stated that the JTTA has been made aware of some overseas players who have Jamaican heritage and will be reaching out to them, with the hope that they can help Jamaica climb the table tennis rankings.

According to Lue, this will form a part of the development thrust, as he is not pleased with the standard of the sport on the island, although he believes the association is fighting an uphill battle currently, because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

He argues that with the protocols and the restrictions on spectator attendance at local events, the Association is finding it difficult to sell the sports to potential sponsors.

“I am not pleased (with the standard) at all and there is a lot of work to be done. First of all, we hope to get the national squads in place, so that we can invite the elite players in each category coming, to be playing table tennis on a more regular basis,” Lue said.

“In the region, we are near to the bottom of the table. So we have a lot of work to put in and it starts with getting the squads in place, getting competitions going, but it’s rough, because with the fourth wave now, all the protocols and so on will have to be strictly adhered to so we don’t want to take any chances with the health of any of the athletes, or coaches or officials.

“So we have to make sure that we observe all the rules and that makes it very difficult to plan events because everything needs revenue and if you have no spectators then it’s difficult to even approach a sponsor who will say we will have an event where there are no spectators. It makes it difficult but we have to try the best and see how best we can put things in place for the players,” he stated.

To aid the development, Lue said, the JTTA wants to have a tournament each month and this has been hampered by the pandemic, which has resulted in the cost to stage these events skyrocketing.

He said the protocols require testing for all involved in each tournament, which was a $1.75 million cost alone, for the National Championships last year. He said he is hoping that there will be an ease in the spread of the virus by the time the National Championships comes around later this year so that the protocols will be relaxed.