Top training opportunity for King, Martin

By Morissa Lindsay

A first-time opportunity has come knocking for two of Barbados’ top senior badminton players as Kennie King and Shae Martin are expected to leave the island next Monday for a two-week training camp at the Centre of Excellence in Holback, Denmark.

King and Martin, both members of the Attackk Badminton Academy run by Shakeira Waithe who is among the highest qualified Badminton World Federation coaches, said they wanted to learn as much as they can for those two weeks in Europe.

A second-year University of the West Indies student pursuing Computer Science, King noted that based on how the players in Asia and Europe compete, they make playing look so easy and it is against that background he wants to grasp as much knowledge as he can from the coaches there.

“It is great to travel and get that exposure outside of Barbados, so I am really excited to travel to Denmark for the camp. The way the players in Asia and Europe train compared to how we train in the Pan American region, it would be good to see how they structure training programs compared to how we structure ours and those are the things I am looking forward to seeing.

“While there I am looking forward to also improving all aspects of my game and just to get that opportunity to get coaching in the Europe region will afford me to improve on certain aspects of my game because over there they make it look a lot easier than we do,” King explained.

It has so far been a busy year for King who represented Barbados at the recently concluded Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, England. He also featured at the inaugural Junior Pan American Games last November and also played at the Senior Pan American Championship held earlier this year in El Salvador.

Kennie King

Both King and Martin credited the Barbados Olympic Association, Badminton Pan American, the Barbados Badminton Association, the brand Kure Oxygen Waters and fellow national athletes and coaches who assisted in their preparation for Denmark.

Following Denmark, both King and Martin will venture off to Hungary where they will compete at the Hungarian International tournament. Ranked 409th in the Badminton World Federation men’s singles, King continues to have a busy year and will also travel to Mexico and Canada later this year to compete. Therefore, his time spent training at other local clubs such as West Coast Eagle and Attacked Badminton is an added boost for him.

Meanwhile, Martin explained how much he appreciated the opportunity. “The opportunity presented is very appreciated and valued because to be able to travel to Denmark at one of the premier training facilities is great.

“I luckily have been able to find myself in a training situation just like this a couple years ago and now the only way to really go forward from here is to try my best to absorb everything, from the way they train, attitudes, anything we can adopt and bring into our system at home for the betterment of our athletes in our sport. Anything is good information when it comes to those opportunities.

“It is important to get quality training and for us our situation is not the lack of quality but the lack of resources but unfortunately that is just how things are and we are dealing with it day by
day and we perform regardless,” Martin added.

morissalindsay@barbadostoday.bb