Dr. Bridget Adams takes over Americas Netball ahead of Qualifier

Marva Bernard demitted office on Saturday after election of officers and annual general meeting of Americas Netball which was held at Liguanea Club in Kingston.  Dr. Bridget Adams of Trinidad & Tobago was elected unopposed as the new president.  She was the secretary during Bernard’s tenure.  Bernard will sits on the executive until the Netball World Cup in South Africa in 2023, as regional director.

The new members of the executive are Jamaica’s Simone Forbes as first vice president and Shirley Benjamin of Antigua & Barbuda as the secretary.  They join the other members of the board who have continued in their respective positions, such as treasurer Jacintha Ballentine of St. Vincent & the Grenadines and second vice president Javon Edwards of St. Marteen.  (Forbes is also first vice president of Netball Jamaica.)

Adams was upbeat about the results and said that she was looking forward to taking up the mantle of the presidency.  She intends to continue of the projects that Bernard did in terms of up-skilling the region to improve the level of the sport and to reduce the gap between Jamaica and the rest of the countries in the Americas.  “We have started working on several projects, governance, umpiring, coaching, table officiating, high performance and so on and there are some new ones that we would like to do.  We would like to look at the development of the region and in developing the region we will be looking at under fourteens, under sixteens, under nineteens going right up because recently it was announced at the Commomwealth Games that we will have a 14 – 19 age group Fast Five tournament in Trinidad & Tobago and so we do not play Fast 5 in that age group so we need to have a programme where we play Fast5 a little more often so the players will be familiar with what Fast 5 is about.”  She said that there is a lot of work to do and she will be getting the members on board in order to achieve the objectives.  She also credited for leading the way over the past four years especially during the period of the intense Covid 19 pandemic.

Forbes was also looking forward to the challenge of improving netball in the region.  She said “two things I would love to see happen, grassrooots netball development and playing more competitive netball in the region and of course the athletes having a voice, more player centered and game centered.”

Outgoing president Marva Bernard said “I thought we did our best with the executive with what we had.  We used the development fund that World Netball gave us to up-kill our members until when the pandemic lifted and so we would be in a better position to administer sport their countries.  We trained coaches.  We trained umpires.  We trained future leaders.  We also did a seven sessions in high performance systems and structures and we brought experts from New Zealand to help us.”  The areas that she thought more could have been done was increasing the number of umpires and completing the website for the region.

Bernard said she was very happy for Forbes who she mentored, to get unto the regional board and wished the new board every success.