Last year Chelsea Edghill became the first player from the English speaking Caribbean to participate at the Olympic Games.
Since then, she is aware of the lofty expectations of those who follow the sport and her progress.
Yesterday Edghill was asked about living up to those expectations.
“Everyone will have expectations of me, but I think at this point in time what matters are the goals that I’ve set for myself and the goals that my team would’ve set for me, my coaches.
It’s just a matter of her managing those expectations and going out there and giving my best.”
Earlier this year Edghill participated at the Caribbean Senior TT Championships in Cuba and failed to emerge from her group in the women’s singles event, a rare occurrence.
She also wants to do better than her last Commonwealth games participation in 2014.
“My goal is to surpass my last games that I attended in 2014 and to execute what I’ve been learning at the training camps in Germany and Portugal the last few months,” she said.
Along the way Edghill has racked-up one of the more impressive résumés in the English-speaking Caribbean, becoming the region’s first-ever female Olympian in the sport.
Edghill and southpaw Shemar Britton are the two highest-ranked table tennis players in Guyana.
Like Edghill, Britton is hoping for improved performances at the games this time around.
The men and women’s team will head into battle on Friday, the first day of competition, where they will compete in the team event.
National coach Idi Lewis said yesterday that the draws for the team event will be done today at the meeting of the Technical Committee.
For Britton, the games in Birmingham, England, will be his third following his debut in 2014 (Scotland) and 2018 in Australia.
Currently ranked 265 in the world by the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF), Britton stated that at the start of this year, his target was to finish 2022 in the top 200.
“I got to 261, so I’m hoping that before the year ends I go to the top 200,” he declared.
Britton, like the rest of team Guyana at the previous Commonwealth Games, had a good performance in 2018 before he was edged out by Canada’s Antoine Bernaden in the preliminary round.
“Last time I lost in a pretty hard match in the decider, this time I want to go at least to the round of 16 and I think I have the capabilities to do that,” Britton said.
As it relates to Guyana’s over-all performance at the Commonwealth Games, Britton noted, “We have history, since my first Commonwealth Games in 2014, we’ve always finished in the top 10 teams. We want to finish in the top four this time around. We know it’s a big goal but we’re going positive.”
Men – Shemar Britton (Singles, Doubles, Team, Mixed Doubles), Christopher Franklin (Singles, Doubles, Team, Mixed Doubles), Johnathan Van Lange (Singles, Doubles, Team, Mixed Doubles) and Joel Alleyne (Doubles, Team).
Women – Chelsea Edghill (Singles, Doubles, Team, Mixed Doubles), Natalie Cummings (Singles, Doubles, Team, Mixed Doubles), Priscilla Greaves (Singles, Doubles, Team) and Thuraia Thomas (Doubles, Team, Mixed Doubles).
