President of the Barbados Table Tennis Association (BTTA), Trevor Farley believes Tyrese Knight was unlucky not to have advanced to the quarterfinals of the men’s singles competition at the ongoing ITTF-Americas Central American and Caribbean Table Tennis Championships.
Knight, the most successful local player during the championships, was eliminated by Guatemala’s Ricardo Gatica in a keenly contested Round of 16 match on Tuesday.
In a contest that went the distance, Gatica eventually prevailed 11-9, 10-12, 6-11, 7-11, 12-10, 11-7, 13-11.
Speaking to Barbados TODAY from the Dominican Republic where he is managing the team, Farley said Knight had opportunities to win the match.
“I thought that Tyrese probably should have won the match. It was a tough hard fought encounter. He was up in the seventh game 10-9 and I believe that he wanted to win really badly, so he put a little bit of pressure on himself, causing him to make some unforced errors,” Farley said.
“…As a former athlete who is still playing, but not as competitively as before, I trained myself to focus at 10-9 and those tight scores and when it’s really important. I would visualize the game starting at 0-0 and that kind of helped me.”
While none of the Barbadian players advanced to the quarterfinal stage, Farley said he was still impressed by the team’s performance.
He maintained that the team performed creditably against tough competition.
“Tre Riley performed very well, I wasn’t expecting him to do so well. He won against a creditable opponent from Guyana and surpassed my expectations.”
“Ramario Gill was pretty much a newcomer to the team but he also performed pretty well. Mark Dowell is a seasoned campaigner and he did well also. The thing is that a lot of our athletes came down with some injuries and that kinda plagued their performances,” Farley explained.
He pointed out that Barbados was very competitive when compared to other islands in the English-speaking Caribbean.
“We won against all the English-speaking teams except Saint Lucia, who we did not play, and I think only St Lucia finished the event a couple of places higher than us.”
“Moving forward, we need to work much more on the physical, and in particular, mental aspects of the game. Most of our athletes are falling short when it comes to the close games, so I think they need to work on the mental aspect,” Farley pointed out.
Looking ahead, the BTTA president said local players were set for more high level competition this year.
“Our men’s team has qualified for the CAC championships in Scotland this summer and Anthonette Riley has also qualified for the women’s singles event there. Our main focus now will be to continue to improve in all areas until then,” he said.
(KH)
