St. John’s Antigua- The Liberta Sports Club is making plans to continue its development of young athletes in the community.

President Kenneth “Flipper” Benjamin said a lot of youngsters with good athletic abilities came to the fore at this year’s annual Hayden Walsh Easter Classic.

Benjamin said arrangements are being made to develop young netballers as a means of reviving a sport that has been dormant for several years in the Liberta community.

“Out of the Hayden Walsh Easter Classic we saw quite a number of our young boys and girls who want to participate at this level. Right now we are speaking to two ladies from outside the village. We want to engage their services into becoming the coach for netball,” Benjamin said.

“We have some Under-15 girls and we think we need to start netball from that age-group in the community. We don’t want to lose them and so we are looking at that.”

Benjamin said moves are also afoot to develop young basketballers in the Liberta community. Benjamin said arrangements are being made with Wayne “Deadly” Henry to come in and work with the young basketball players.

“I know we have Deadly from Fort Road. He has shown an interest in coming to work with out Under-13s boys basketball players,” Benjamin said.

“Those are the areas that we are looking at. We are really focussing on the youth programmes because quite a few of the sports are not doing very well and some of them are not even existing at the senior level.”

Benjamin also said Liberta Sports Club has made representation to partner with the Liberta primary school in developing young athletes at the learning institution.

Benjamin said a part of this initiative will involve world warri grand master champion Trevor Simon, a native of Liberta village, who will be imparting his skills of the board game to youngsters at the school.

“We have spoken to Trevor Simon about starting a warri academy in Liberta school. The first vice-prsident Michelle Charles and myself recently had a meeting with the school and there are a couple of initiatives we are putting toward the school,” Benjamin said.

“The Liberta school did fairly well in the junior athletics and quite a few of the students did well with outstanding performances so we are going to tap into that to see how well we can incorporate the Liberta school’s sports programme as a part of our stewardship.”