In an effort to raise the level of throwing in the country among junior athletes, the Blue Chip Athletics Throwing Club is set to host the fourth edition of its camp next month in New Providence. The camp is scheduled for August 2 to 13 at Queen's College Senior High School. The camp will be split into two sessions. The first will be a clinic on the fundamentals of the event, and the second will be centered around technical work on the field.

According to camp organizer Corrington Maycock, the purpose of the event will be to develop the throwing events in the high school system.

"For the most part, the private school sector has the fundamentals of throwing down-pat, so now we're trying to even the field and develop the public school coaches and athletes," said Maycock. "What we really want is to have a group of throwers ready to compete at the 2018 CARIFTA Games. The Bahamas used to dominate in the throwing events years back, but since then the other countries have caught up to us. We used to get about 12 to 13 medals in the field events alone, so what we're really trying to do is reclaim our position on top of the field events."

The camp is tailored for students in grades 7 to 12 and will run from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. daily. Unlike most camps that take a break on the weekends, the throwers camp will also run on Saturdays.

"Aside from CARIFTA, we just want to develop programs that sustain themselves in the future," Maycock said. "We've gotten a great reception from junior and senior high coaches and we expect them to leave with a greater understanding of the throwing events. We need more coaches to get involved to be able to pass the knowledge along and keep it going."

One of the things that Maycock is pushing for, with the assistance of the Bahamas Association of Athletic Associations (BAAA) is the implementation of more throwers-only meets.

He said: "The BAAA has been very responsive to the idea of having more of these kind of events. Right now, we're working to get a couple more off the ground, to the point that we can get each club to host one throughout the year."

According to Maycock, the prices for the camp will be released some time this week.

Interested persons can contact Maycock at telephone number (242) 395-6381 or at e-mail address bluechipathleticsclub@gmail.com.

Randy Smith, Guardian Sports Reporter

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