Association gets technical director

The Barbados Wrestling Association (BWA) now has John Cho in its corner as the new technical director.

Cho, a Guyana-born Canadian resident, was appointed three weeks ago by the executive body of the BWA who are working towards taking the sport to another level.

President of the BWA, Rollins Alleyne said he was happy with the choice and believes Choo has what it takes to develop wrestling in Barbados from the grassroots and up.

Providing that the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic passes by August, Choo is expected to arrive on the island for the first time to gauge where the sport is at locally.

What is of note is that the 53-year-old who began his journey in wrestling at the age of 14 is offering his technical director services free of charge to the BWA.

With resources being limited and funding at a minimal, Choo told Barbados TODAY the two main things when it came to wrestling were the coaches and the mat which the BWA needed.

“One of the things BWA could do is ask the governing body (United World Wrestling) to share (cost) a mat because they are not cheap. You have to not only buy a brand new mat and they easily go in Canadian for ten to 12 thousand Canadian and they last forever. Unless you dig a mat through them they would last a lifetime of any coach.

“We are trying to create a Caribbean wrestling league. So they are trying to build that community by talking with other Caribbean countries. That is my focus too, see how we can help develop a Caribbean wrestling league,” Cho said.

He added: “My focus is to develop it from a youth-based grassroots level. I am not worried about the upper levels. That is why Rollins was in Canada. They have athletes who are trying to qualify for the Olympics which is postponed but we have to qualify people throughout the Americas.”

Cho prefers to coach young people from the grassroots level especially those that are aspiring to be future Olympians. He currently holds a National Coaching Certification Program (NCCP) which affords him the opportunity to coach at the national level.

A proposal is in the works to target students and young people within local communities that have an interest and desire to learn.

“The proposal is where you are a teacher at a school. You may be teaching physical education and let’s say you have access to a gym with mats, then the resting mat you would teach that sport for one to two weeks as part of an individual programme.

“Then we would have proposal B like a one week program and introduce what we did for wrestling in the school system but over that one week. So I would now be a community coach and usually, in Canada, your criminal record must be checked before coaching.”.

No stranger to the Caribbean, Cho was in Jamaica 2016 with Rick Henry who is a Jamaican by birth and the two put on a wrestling clinic for young people at the Gerald Claude Foster University located in Spanish Town.

Cho said sadly there was no follow up to that programme because Henry lives in Texas and there was no one to push it. In 2018 Choo returned to Kingston for a week where he taught at-risk youth and anyone else who was willing to learn how to wrestle.

According to the experienced technical director, one of the things Barbados has that Jamaica doesn’t are the coaches. Therefore, Cho suggested that the Caribbean territories work together to develop best practices in terms of how best to better their programmes.

morissalindsay@barbadostoday.bb