For most of her table tennis career national player Chelsea Edghill has been funded by her parents Godfrey and Deidre Edghill.
Now, at 24, Edghill feels that her parents should no longer have to carry that burden.
“Throughout my career majority of the onus was on my parents. They funded almost all of my trips, funded my training and all of my travels and everything that I would ever want from the sport,” she said at a media conference yesterday at the National Racquet Centre, Woolford Avenue.
Now, the prodigious young talent believes that she can no longer have her parents fund her playing career since she has transitioned to adulthood, coupled with the fact that she is representing Guyana.
“When I go abroad, I represent Guyana and I don’t think it is fair that they continue to fund the brunt of my travels and me representing Guyana as a whole,” she said.
No longer a junior
The former two-time Caribbean champion said she feels that it is unfair to have her parents continue to fund her development especially since she is representing Guyana.
“As I get older I begin to understand how money works and what not and I would say for me personally, it is unfair to have my parents continue to fund my career because at this point I am no longer a junior, I am an adult.
“I am capable of earning and what not but at the same time, I don’t represent myself,” she declared.
To be fair Edghill acknowledged that she has received support/sponsorship/funding from other sources.
She was the beneficiary of sponsorship from the Continental Group of Companies as well as from the Guyana Olympic Association among others.
“Yes I was assisted by the GOA (Guyana Olympic Association) with an IOC scholarship and yes the association did what they could and I am very grateful to both the GOA and GTTA for affording me the opportunities to go and represent Guyana and I want to point out I was sponsored by Continental Group of Companies,” she said.
Latin America and Olympic Qualifiers
Edghill, who was recently in Portugal on an International Olympic Committee scholarship, says that one of the main challenges facing her is sponsorship.
“Leading up to preparing for the Games (Latin America Olympic Qualifiers held recently) not being sponsored for whatever reason and this was before the pandemic as well, not being able to garner sponsorship to compete at the highest levels and to attend the highest training camps was difficult.
“And even though I was in Portugal, I was playing at a club in the professional league,” she stated.
At the Latin America Singles and doubles Olympic Qualifiers, Edghill was the only Guyanese player to win a match although she was eliminated in the next round.
Speaking of that tournament Edghill said: “With my performance at the qualification for Tokyo, yes I am disappointed that I didn’t qualify but at the same time I am proud of my achievement of being able to compete and play at my best and at a very high level despite all the challenges that I have faced throughout the process and it goes to show that with hard work you can achieve anything and I can say that I am somewhat satisfied with being able to perform at such a level.”
Proper structure for table tennis
Apart from the lack of sponsorship for local athletes, Edghill feels that there is need to put a proper structure in place to help table tennis players realise their full potential.
She also sees the need for more and improved facilities and gave the following recommendations.
“I think firstly we need to start from an association level. Once there is a structure in terms of how we develop our athletes and make them socially viable and make them ready to where they are a brand, then companies would want them.
“Then we need more support from the government and our governing bodies sports wise in general but we need to as athletes offer something in return, might it be an image, might be a great talent or something, it’s a two-way street and I think we need to have more of a dialogue with these companies and have more of a sit down on an organizational level to say `ok this is where I want to see this athlete, this is where I want to go’ and figure out the plan as to how we can get there.”
Edghill also alluded to the lack of proper facilities locally and said that was one of the reasons local players have to resort to overseas training in order to be more competitive.
She detailed in relation to table tennis solely, “We don’t have the facilities to produce top international athletes, one being we don’t have the population of table tennis players to be able to do so to begin with and second at this point there is no structure or programmes in place to facilitate and ensure we produce top class players,” she ended.
