Talented cricketers the toast of Grantley Adams

The Grantley Adams Memorial Secondary School continues to reap success, this time in the area of sports as two of their talented and outstanding Under-19 Barbados cricketers Jatario Prescod and Zaliya Campbell have made the school proud.

This morning during the general assembly, former student and West Indies Under-19 World Cup player Kevin Wickham made a presentation of gift hampers to both Prescod and Campbell who have set high standards for themselves and are committed to doing well.

During an interview with Barbados TODAY, the 17-year-old Prescod said that it felt good to be recognized by the school for his continuous hard work having also recently made the West Indies Under-17 Rising Stars team.

The Upper Fifth form student shared his journey in the sport and credited Wickham for inspiring him to play cricket. “Growing up it was basically myself and Kevin playing and he is the one who encouraged me to take the game seriously which I did every evening at Cuthbert Moore Primary School and now I am happy to be at this level.

“Representing Barbados was good. I got selected for the Under-15 team but I did not get to travel because of COVID-19. But yet another opportunity came through the Barbados Under-17 team for which I was selected and that was good. I was nervous the first game but that did not matter because I came out victorious in the end.”

The gifted all-rounder who bowls pace and bats in the middle order also expressed that so far representing Barbados has been an exciting journey and one that he enjoys very much. He is also hoping to one day represent the West Indies senior team.

Prescod made mention of the incredible work of teachers Sherwin Greene and Trevor Griffith whom he noted have steered him on the right path to sporting excellence at the school. “Coming up there were a lot of good players at the school like Kevin, and I was just following in their footsteps. I was not feeling pressured or anything, so that was good. Recently we had road tennis and the principal (Major Andrew Skeete) is working hard to get the school painted and stuff which is a great motivation for us. Every time I am at school I feel love from the teachers, especially Mr Greene (Sherwin) and Griffith (Trevor), so big shout out to them.”

Fellow Barbados cricketer Zaliya Campbell who plays with the Under-19 ladies team shared that it felt awesome to not only represent her country but to achieve great things that her school population is also proud of.

“I feel so awesome because I performed well and made my school and teachers proud especially my cricket coaches and it brings me great joy to represent my country Barbados. From young I had good potential in cricket and I only began to take it seriously when I entered the Grantley Adams Memorial Secondary School,” Campbell stated.

The 19-year-old all-rounder is an opening batter and medium pace bowler, and she attributed the fine qualities of hardwork and dedication to her current success as she endeavours to achieve a scholarship through cricket.

Coached by Richard Clarke and Robin Parris at the Barbados Cricket Association, Campbell represented Barbados for the second consecutive year at the Under-19 level in Trinidad and Tobago.

Campbell encouraged other young female cricketers who want to represent their country to work hard and never give up as she credited the school for providing her with the platform needed to accomplish great things.

“I feel very good to be a part of and to represent Grantley Adams School because usually everybody always has negative things to say about Grantley Adams School but we have great students here,” she said.

Physical Education teacher at the Grantley Adams Memorial School Sherwin Greene is happy with the direction in which Prescod and Campbell are currently going on their cricketing journey. He also noted that the school will continue to encourage the cricketers with the hope that others will follow in their footsteps.

“We realized that there are a lot of opportunities as it relates to sports, so we try to encourage students who are talented and who want to be student athletes to make the most of their abilities; look to improve on them, look to improve their skills, their knowledge about sports and you never know where the sport can take you because there are multiple opportunities within each sport.

“Each sport is unique but there are some which are more prominent than others but regardless there are opportunities now whether it is a scholarship, a professional contract or even a career outside of being an athlete because there are a lot of other areas that exist in sports that persons can find employment in the future. So, all of those things we try to show students when they have a particular talent or interest in the sport,” Greene told Barbados TODAY.

Wickham, who has blazed the trail for Prescod and Campbell to follow, is currently playing in the Barbados senior team trials and will be in the final for the Sir Gordon Greenidge XI early next month. He
had words of encouragement for the student body.

“Keep your heads on, obviously you will have a lot of failures, I have been through that but the success is really the nice feeling of it. There is a lot of pain through sports and you will get more failures than performances but just don’t be too hard on yourself when you are not performing as hard as you could. Just
keep going, train harder and the results will show,” he said.

morissalindsay@barbadostoday.bb