12 minute read
Boxer Joshua Buatsi’s mission
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AMBITION:
Joshua Buatsi, centre, at Wisdom Boxing Gym in Accra
Empowering youth
Boxer Joshua Buatsi is on a mission to help communities in Ghana. By Rodney Hinds
AS BOXER Joshua Buatsi’s professional career steadily pivots, so does his ultimate ambition to empower the youth of his born nation of Ghana.
Buatsi, the 2016 Rio Olympic bronze light-heavyweight medallist, has so far made a favourable and prominent influence within boxing and has become a force to be reckoned with in his division.
He was born in Tema, a city on the bight of Benin and Atlantic coast of Ghana, to Christian parents from the Volta region of the Anlo Ewe ethnic group. He lived his juvenile years in the country before moving to Croydon, south London with his family at the age of nine. He now has 16 professional fights under his belt, (16-013 TKOs).
The connection Buatsi has with the place of his birth never waned. His love for the people of Ghana has always been a key part of his make-up and fuel to his ambitions. These key fundamentals, together with a deep Christian faith, has been the inspiration to set up a foundation in Ghana to give back to the community he was raised in.
The mission of the foundation is to focus on the amelioration of the youth from under-served communities in Ghana. The ultimate goals are to strengthen their innate physical and mental ability, to develop a high level of academic prowess, discipline, self-esteem, and confidence through the disciplines boxing provides. The foundation is split into supporting two divisions; an orphanage, New Life Nungua Children’s Home International is a registered non-governmental and non-profit organisation founded from a burning desire to aid the development of the homeless orphans in Ghana.
In addition, Wisdom Boxing Gym has been set up, which is an educational fitness institution focused on youth development, education and life skills through physical fitness and boxing.
Top coach Lorna Boothe looking to raise standards in track and field
By Rodney Hinds
FORMER COMMONWEALTH Games gold medallist Lorna Boothe MBE is among the country’s leading athletics coaches that have launched the British Athletics Coaches Association (BACA), with the aim of providing support and representation for all British athletics coaches and helping to raise standards in track and field in Britain.
Boothe, right, has gone on to become a top-level coach whose achievements were recognised in the 2019 Honours List with the MBE for ‘services to sports coaching and administration’. Heavily involved at club level and as a director of England Athletics, Boothe has helped set up the IAAF Academy, the World Class Coaches Club and the lottery-funded World Class Performance Programme.
With BACA, she will liaise with the European Athletics Coaches Association and the Global Athletics Coaching Academy.
And BACA’s first innovation will be to provide expert advice and mentoring to its member coaches from a pool of some of Britain’s greatest ever competitors and coaches, through its BACA Advisers’ Panel. The Advisers’ Panel will provide BACA members with the experience and knowhow of top coaches from across the whole range of track and field events, including para specialists. The BACA Advisers’ Panel includes former world champion distance runner Liz McColgan, multievent specialist Rafer Johnson and jumps expert John Shepherd.
“BACA has been formed to assist British athletics coaches move into a properly managed volunteer and professional future,” said Mike Winch, one of BACA’s founders. The other founders are Alex Starr, Judy Oakes OBE and Sarah Hewitt.
Winch added: “We aim to provide coaches with the tools to fulfil their aspirations within the sport, to deliver the best coaching assistance to their athletes possible.”
BACA membership is open to all qualified, licensed athletics coaches. The association has its own members’ code of conduct and supports the UK Athletics and European Athletics’ welfare and diversity policies. BACA will liaise closely with the European Athletics Coaches Association and Global Athletics Coaching Academy.
BACA will operate independently of the national and regional governing bodies, while intending to work alongside the governing bodies to discuss coaching issues.
After a long period of consultation and planning, the founders have registered BACA as a not-for-profit company, as well as developing a presence across social media, including a Facebook group which already has 1,600 members.
Visit www.baca.uk.net.
Burning ambition
Aptly for the festive season, the Voice of Sport’sMatthew Chadder talks to two young Christmas crackers making a name for themselves in the competitive world of fencing
OGHENEGAREN ESIOVWA-THOMPSON has been fencing since the age of six and has shown a high level of talent.
At such a young age, he has already achieved and won so much within the sport.
He’s held national champion status since the age of nine and won nearly every tournament that he’s been involved in, including most recently the International Competition Wratislavia Challenge 2022 when he came first out of 126 fencers.
The young man is destined for greatness. We sat down with him and his father, Darren Kwaw Thompson, to talk about his passion for fencing and his future goals and ambitions.
MC: Where does the love for fencing come from?
OET: The Power Rangers! I would see people playing with swords and I took inspiration from that, and I thought ‘why don’t I try it?’ I would play with pots and pans as if they were swords, I would pretend I was one of the characters in the movie. My mum bought me a plastic sword to play with then she came up with the idea that I should take up fencing.
MC: What is your earliest memory of fencing?
OET: I remember my mum telling me that I found a place where you can play with swords, when I saw the venue where I would be training, I thought, ‘yeah, I will try the sport out’.
MC: What do you love the most about fencing?
OET: It is not repetitive. Every competition and every opponent is different, you actually have to think about what you’re going to do, and how you are going to apply your tactics. DT: Every match is different, you just have to pretty much adapt to the person that you’re fighting. Sometimes you might try one thing that doesn’t work and then you have to then change in a split second and do something else. Your cognitive abilities have to be well developed because everything’s within a split second and it’s extremely precise.
MC: Darren, when did you feel watching him, that he had the ability and at what age was he when you thought, ‘right, we’re going to really take this seriously?’
DT: I think it’s when the instructor said to me one week he fenced really well, and then the following week, she said, he fences really well and then the third week, she said, listen, he beats everybody in this class, you have to put him in competitions.
I was quite reluctant to do that because I didn’t know anything about fencing, this was completely new to me. She said, ‘look, you have to put him in, we’re going to put him into a team competition and then after that, it’s up to you’. I think that was the point where I was like okay, this is now a lot more than just Power Rangers and plastic swords!
MC: What competition has been your most memorable?
OET: I think my favourite one was a Welsh competition I was nine years old at the time. This was my first Leon Paul Under 13’s competition that I won. In the final, which was quite hard, I was down 6-2, and I managed to
DESTINED FOR GREATNESS:
Oghenegaren EsiovwaThompson with his coach
turn it around and win the match, 10-6.
MC: How hard has it been to maintain a high level? What do you do to maintain a discipline to keep working hard?
OET: I try to train, even after winning a competition, sometimes I take a week off. There’s always new competitions, and always higher age categories. You’ve just got to keep motivated to be honest. I always strive for more.
MC: What is your ultimate goal or ambition within fencing? Where do you want to take it?
OET: I want to win the Olympics. The best prize, biggest prize for me is to win the Olympics and hopefully I can do that. It is going to take a lot of work, but hopefully I can get there one day.
Teagan targets Olympics glory after Commonwealth success
AT SUCH a young age, Teagan Williams-Stew has high aims and ambitions for the future, with her eyes firmly set on the Olympics. The teenager spoke to the Voice of Sport about her journey so far and what she hopes the future will hold.
MC: Where does your love of fencing come from originally?
TWS: I was looking for secondary schools and I went to one school and their PE teacher there said, ‘come along to fencing and try it’. So, I went along, and just loved it. I quit all my other sports at the time so that I could fence, and I just haven’t stopped.
MC: Is it something you were curious to try?
TWS: It was definitely something I was curious to try because no one around me does it. I thought, ‘this sport is different, let me try it’. Because it’s such a different sport, everyone was like, ‘oh, what’s fencing?’ And that made me want to continue even more.
MC: What is the best part about fencing for you?
TWS: Fencing is such an unpredictable sport, which I really like as scenarios are always changing and there are some calls that are very unpredictable. TWS: That was my first ever Commonwealth Games and I was lucky enough to do both junior and senior. I didn’t know how I would be feeling going into the senior category, so it was just great for me to get on the podium. My first competition was the senior day, and after I came second in that it kind of set me up for the rest of the week. I was like, ‘okay, now it’s just time to win everything else’.
MC: Just how tough was the tournament?
TWS: I don’t think I’ve trained as much as I usually would, leading up to the Commonwealth Games. For me, that was the biggest thing mentally, not necessarily feeling prepared, and then going into the competition, and then I came second, which then that reassured me.
MC: Women’s participation in sports is growing a lot. With your experience as a fencer, how have you found it to be? Accepting and inclusive or have you found there are barriers you’ve had to push down?
TWS: I think for the most part it is accepting. Being a woman in sport anyway, there are always certain barriers that you have to push down. I think with fencing they’re trying their best to make it equal, but it is a male-dominated sport at the end of the day, and it always has been. I know British fencing are working on trying to make it a more equal sport.
MC: What is your ultimate goal and ambition within fencing?
TWS: My short-term goals are to medal internationally for the next couple of seasons, and then my final goal would, of course, be to get to the Olympics and medal there, as an individual or part of a team. I feel like it’s just a lot of hard work and dedication.
You dedicate your whole life to sport pretty much when you do it at an elite level, you’re flying away every week, and you’re training five days a week. I’ve still got a lot of work to do and there’s a lot of training that needs to be done, but I don’t see with all of those things put together why I can’t get there.
OF SPORT
DECEMBER 2022 | THE VOICE
CENTRE OF ATTENTION:
Kerry Davis has been inducted into the Hall of Fame (photo: National Football Museum)
Kerry’s deserved honour
First black woman to play for England inducted into the National Football Museum’s Hall of Fame
KERRY DAVIS, England’s fi rst ever black player to play for the Lionesses, has been inducted into the National Football Museum’s Hall of Fame.
Kerry was inducted in the Hall of Fame during the fi nal day of the Football Writing Festival which has been hosted by the museum once more. Kerry was part of the panel talk ‘Legacy of the Lionesses’ alongside author Carrie Dunn, journalist Miriam Walker-Khan and host Harriet Muckle.
Judges voted unanimously to induct Kerry in recognition of her groundbreaking football career, and pioneering successes as the fi rst female black professional footballer to play for England, laying foundations for the ethnically diverse sporting community of the future.
During her 16-year international career, Davis represented the England women’s national football team in the inaugural 1984 UEFA Championships fi nal and at England’s fi rst FIFA Women’s World Cup appearance in 1995. She also helped England win the Mundialito tournament in Italy and scored for her country at Wembley Stadium. In total, the ex-forward won 82 caps and scored an impressive 44 goals for England.
Tim Desmond, chief executive of the National Football Museum, said: “In 2019 we relaunched the National Football Museum Hall of Fame to be more representative of our women footballers both past and present.
“As the museum researched the stories around the women’s game for our exhibitions and programmes, more and more legends have come to the fore. We are delighted now to induct Kerry into the Hall of Fame; she is truly a pioneer and now takes her rightful place amongst the greats of both the women’s and the men’s game.”
At club level, her journey began in Stoke on-Trent as a 23-Year-old student playing for Crewe Alexandra Ladies, when Italian club Roi Lazio signed her in November 1985.
She spent four years playing semi–professionally in Italy, one year at the Stadio Flaminio with Roi Lazio, two years with Trani and one with Napoli. Davis eventually returned to Crewe Alexandra Ladies, but by April 1994 was playing for Knowsley United Women in the FA Women’s Cup fi nal. Knowsley became Liverpool Ladies that summer and Davis left for Croydon Women in Decem-
ber 1994. Kerry joins acclaimed and proud company, most recently Carol Thomas, Walter Tull, Paul Ince and Terry Butcher.
The Hall of Fame, supported by the Professional Footballers’ Association, celebrates the achievements of those who have made an outstanding contribution to the game, either on or off the pitch.
