Sunshine Girl starts island’s first academy

FORMER SUNSHINE Girls goal shooter Jodi-ann Ffrench-Kentish has established Jamaica’s first netball academy, saying that the development of the sport was paramount for the new organisation.

She said the Future Netballers Academy is a non-profit organisation that is on a mission to help identify talented young players, ages six to 17, and will help children to understand the importance of having fun while playing the game.

Ffrench-Kentish, who has been retired for almost eight years, says it has always been her passion to serve the sport in this capacity.

“It has always been my passion to serve after competing competitively or internationally, so I decided to work with the youth because I believe foundation is important … so I decided to start this academy,” she said.

She said the academy’s activities will begin with a series of netball clinics at the Scotia Liguanea Sports Complex on July 16, 23, and 30.

“It’s actually a pilot project that we are running for six months. It will commence from the 16th of July, and every Saturday, we will have programmes at the location.” she said.

“Coming out of the clinics we will have persons signing up at those clinics to get our initial start-up – the target is between 40 and 50 children,” she said.

IMPROVING NETBALL STANDARDS

Ffrench-Kentish, who represented Jamaica at the national level starting from the under-16 national team, said programmes like the academy would help to improve the standards of netball in Jamaica.

“I believe a part of the solution to help improve the youth is to carefully support their training and the quality of their games so that overall, Jamaica’s ranking can improve,” she said.

“We have the blessing of Netball Jamaica as well. They endorse the programme. [We want] to have members of the academy work consistently with our training programme and get them ready enough to feed into the development programme for Jamaica and further enhance their skills.”

Ffrench-Kentish said the academy will differ from a regular netball team because they will take the time out to help develop children at all levels.

“Objectives of the programme include having fun-filled sessions in which we can effectively and efficiently teach children between these ages the fundamentals of netball, which is very important,” she said.

“It is almost a three-tiered programme, where you have the school and community programmes, the Saturday programmes, and the individual sessions. So that’s how we are going to tailor the programmes.”

She said that although netball is the main focus of the academy, its objectives are not limited to the sport, and although the academy is still in its start-up stage, she is looking forward to its growth and impact on future netballers’ lives.

“The main goal for us is to actually have a complex. So with sponsorship over time, we want to ascertain a sporting hub and not only will we be focusing on netball, in particular, but it would be a complete academy where the children would come do their homework before training starts and have mentorship programmes in just one facility,” she said.

She said the academy has already started to attract sponsors such as sports equipment company Gilbert, which has donated netballs.