Riley urges mentorship of junior athletes

Team Jamaica’s technical leader, David Riley, says the country medalling across multiple disciplines at the World Athletics U20 Championships in Nairobi, Kenya, recently, signals a new level of maturity in the local track and field programme.

However, he thinks that for young emerging talent to better make the transition into the senior ranks, they need a system in place to provide professional guidance and mentorship.

Riley says many junior athletes do not transition into top senior professionals who perform at the global level because of stagnation in performance, or their inability to meet the long-term financial demands of making it on the professional circuit.

However, with a system in place to assist the athletes, he thinks that more will be able to make that transition.

“This should be a deliberate and systematic programme,” Riley told The Gleaner. “Guidance and mentorship come from things being in place, and individuals are assisted, taught, and influenced.”

Riley says that failed transition is usually a result of individuals exiting the sport, or because there is little or no improvement in their performance, which would affect their ability to earn sufficiently to keep themselves going.

“The improvement is not sufficient to secure a contract and make it viable for them as a vocation, which will allow them to earn,” he said.

“So they have not improved as much as they would have wanted. And when it comes to contracts and negotiating contracts, what is standard, or normal, is for an athlete to provide remuneration for personnel (managers, coaches, therapist, psychologist, agents) and all the different persons that provide support to the athletes, and those things are complex.

“If you don’t have the right guidance, you could end up in a situation where the athlete does not get much out of their effort and as a result, they do not see the point in continuing.

“There are multiple reasons for individuals to enter the sport, and the bigger the reason the person has, the more committed they are; and the more committed athlete, in terms of their discipline and practice, end up getting the better quality performances under the right guidance.”

LEARN FROM OTHERS

Riley says that the understanding of what is required to be a professional is sometimes beyond the young athletes, adding that having that type of mentality will also greatly assist youngsters as well. But he says Jamaica is not alone in the failed transition of young athletes, and he believes the country should try to learn from others and compile data on the subject for reference.

“If we don’t stop seeing ourselves as a unit and in a vacuum, then we won’t see some of the same issues facing other nations and realise that there are a lot of lessons we can learn from other people,” he said.

“So we can put things in practice and develop our own system, to ensure that we have our own juniors moving on to the senior ranks.”

Riley used the team in Kenya as an example, saying it did well in registering medal performances across multiple disciplines.

“We medalled in jumps, hurdles, throws, sprints, and we demonstrated our depth in relays by winning four medals from five relays, including one world record in the women’s 4x100m; and we ended the meet with the third-largest medal haul (11) of all the nations,” he said. “And to have adjusted (to COVID-19 restrictions) and perform the way we did was huge, in terms of the effort.”

Riley is one of the senior staff members who remained in Kenya with the nine athletes who tested positive for COVID-19 during the championships.

livingston.scott@gleanerjm.com