Dr Ottley: U-19 cricketers will reach far

UNITED STATES-based professor Dr Margaret Ottley began work with the Trinidad and Tobago national U-19 cricket team and believes that this country’s cricketers have it in themselves to reach very far in the Trinidad Cement Limited Regional Cricket championships starting in Guyana next month.

Speaking to Newsday during a break in yesterday’s session at the National Cricket Centre (NCC), Dr Ottley said: “The work we have done so far has been very productive and the players are responding well to the techniques used. “We started with group dynamics which is so important in a team sport. “The guys are being thrown into group activities and this will help them understand one another better and hence will lead to greater teamwork. “At the end of this programme I would like the players to believe in themselves and bring out that tremendous inner strength they possess. The mind is a very powerful tool and one must know how to tap into this resource.”

The internationally-acclaimed Dr Ottley was recently drafted in by the United States Track and Field Association to work with their top athletes. The woman who likes to call herself “a true child of the soil” was born in Trinidad and gained most of her knowledge here. She has travelled the world extensively delivering lectures in sport psychology. Her next major assignment for Trinidad and Tobago will be the PanAm Games where she will accompany the Trinidad and Tobago athletes taking part in the championships. Dr Ottley was also the sport psychologist attached to the Trinidad and Tobago contingent which travelled to the Commonwealth Games in Malaysia in 1998. She is a very keen hockey player and after gaining her first experience with Checkers Hockey Club, was drafted into the Trinidad and Tobago senior hockey team at the tender age of 14 years.

Dr Ottley still assist hockey players and had stints with the national swimmers, table and lawn tennis players, the squash team currently in Guyana, as well as track athletes.