The Tribune

By BRENT STUBBS

Senior Sports Reporter

bstubbs@tribunemedia.net

PARTICIPANTS of the High Performance Track Club’s 2019 Sprint and Hurdles Clinic got a chance to hear some first-hand experiences from collegians Sasha Wells and Samson Colebrooke.

The two student-athletes, home for the Christmas holiday, addressed the clinic on the final day yesterday at the original Thomas A Robinson Track and Field Stadium.

The third annual clinic ran from Friday and featured a number of coaches and athletes, including Fritz Grant, Andrew Tynes, Rupert Gardiner, Dave Charlton, James Rolle, Bronson Rolle, Andretti Bain, Wells and Colebrooke. “It was a great success. We had a good number of participants,” said Bernard Rolle, High Performance head coach and clinic coordinator.

“We did everything in the line of sprinting and the same thing with the hurdles.

“With this being the last day, we made it a little more fun for them to do some relays. But we spent a lot of time explaining the reason why we do what we do in the relays with all of the fundamental things, the measuring of the steps, the exchanges and the hand coordination.”

While he felt that there was a lot of knowledge imparted to the participants in the past four days, Rolle said if they keep it in the back of their minds when they are warming up and cooling down, they can do some of the mechanics they learned.

“They have to displace some of the bad habits that they had and ingrain some new information into their central nervous system and that isn’t going to be easy,” Rolle said.

“They have to pay attention to a lot of things, but if they can apply some of the techniques that they were taught, they would be okay.”

Rolle said even though the participants thoroughly enjoyed it, they are going to incorporate a few more things in the clinic in 2020 to make it much more attractive so that more athletes can come out and participate during the Christmas break.

The athletes will get a chance to put some of that knowledge to use this weekend as the Bahamas Association of Athletic Associations hosts the Odd Distance Track Classic at the stadium Saturday to kick off the 2020 season.Colebrooke, who leaves today to return to Purdue University where he’s looking forward to lowering his performance best from 10.01 seconds to possibly breaking the Bahamian national record of 9.91 as he gets set to compete in the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan, said it was good to share some of his knowledge.

Sprinter Carlos Brown, a 14-year-old ninth-grader at St John’s College, said he decided to attend the camp for the first time because he wanted to get an understanding of some of the other events that he doesn’t specialise in.

“I learned about the long jump and how to apply myself in the hurdles,” said Brown, who occasionally contests the long jump, but is afraid of hitting the board on the runway and getting injured. So I’m just going to stick with the 100 and 200m

As for the camp, Brown said he enjoyed it and it should certainly propel him into 2020.

“I’m looking forward to making the CARIFTA team and improving on my performances,” he stated.

Kenderi Munnings, a 14-year-old ninth-grader at Temple Christian, has attended the camp for the third straight year, but this year she said she wanted to learn a little more about running the hurdles.

“I learned how to clear the hurdles properly and how to control my race,” said Munnings, whose aim is to make the CARIFTA team in 2020 in the hurdles.

“I got to learn also how to improve my form over the hurdles.”