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| Sunday, 5 October 2003 |
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| News Business Features Editorial
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Foreign coaches to popularize baseball in the country Richard Christie, a Canadian baseball expert attached to the British Columbia Baseball Umpires Association arrived in Sri Lanka to conduct coaching clinics in Colombo and in Polonnaruwa as a part of the annual program of the Sri Lanka Amateur Baseball/Softball Association (SLABSA). Manoj C. Fernando, Secretary, SLABSA, said that Kizuhisa Ueda the resident coach of the association (from Japan) who has given two international victories for his country within a year joined Richard in conducting the baseball clinics for the local umpires and coaches. They will conduct clinics aiming at enhancing the knowledge of our coaches and the clinics will give the participants a unique chance to learn a blend of American and Japanese modern techniques that are widely used in the game. As per the request of the Sri Lanka Baseball Association, five local coaches and two umpires have already been trained in Thailand by the Baseball Federation of Asia. Moreover, the two umpires have already been given the opportunity to officiate two international matches in the Asian Cup 2002 and Youth Asia Cup 2003 respectively. Richard Christie, a director of training at present is an expert in training the umpires and coaches for more than 10 years. He has held the position of the President of the British Columbia Baseball Association. Richard will distribute training manuals which was written by him among all participants. Association resident coach Ueda who is working tirelessly around the clock to develop the standard of Sri Lanka baseball spoke of the need of training the coaches and umpires if Sri Lanka is to be the best baseball playing nations in the Asia before the year 2005. The local association feels that the clinics will give them adequate number of trained coaches and umpires to take up the challenge of increasing the number of teams to 200 in the country within the next 13 months. The association recently introduced the game to the Polonnaruwa District and has made arrangements to conduct zonal tournaments in order to prepare the teams from Polonnaruwa to take part in the regular national tournaments from next year. They are yet to decide with regard to the next district that the game of baseball will be introduced. Any recognised association or society that has an interest in introducing a new Olympic game into a chosen district could contact the association for discussions, Fernando added. (L.F.) |
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