January 14 - 20, 2013: Jamaica Training Clinics & Exhibition

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In January of 2013, Charles, Chris and Angie made their way to the tropical island of Jamaica to launch CPBF's first ever training clinics and exhibition.  We have been planning alongside our directors in Jamaica, Richard (Gregory) Wong and Dr. Kingsley Ford,  for the past few months to get everything together and the idea of putting our plans into action is so very exciting! 

We had originally planned to run 6 days of training clinics with 3 days in Kingston and 3 days in Mandeville; however, due to unforeseen problem with the vehicle we were driving, we had to cancel the last day of clinic in Mandeville.
We ran a total of 6 two-hour sessions in Kingston at the home of the Chinese Benevolent Association (CBA).  The CBA was very generous in donating the use of their facility for our training clinics and the exhibition.  The CBA features 3 courts and we were pretty much at capacity for all of the sessions.  We had a total of 33 players come out during the 3 days with majority taking part in multiple sessions. 
After our 3 days in Kingston, we then drove out to the beautiful city of Mandeville, about 90km from Kingston.  We ran a total of 8 sessions in the 2 days we were there at various locations: Bishop Gibson High School, North Caribbean University (NCU) and DeCarteret College (DC).  We have to thank Mr. Howard Ranger for arranging all the facilities and participants for our clinics.  We had an overwhelming numbers of participants and in some cases people were told they had to attend a later session because there was just not enough court space for all.  In total we had just over 100 participants for the 2 days. 
Thank you to our Sponsors:
  • Zacca Grafx Inc.
Finally to conclude our debut in Jamaica, we hosted The Clash of Champions Exhibition at CBA on January 20, 2013.  The exhibition featured some of the past and current All Jamaica Champions: Gareth Henry, Garron Palmer, Bradley Graham, and Charles Pyne and with many past champions in attendance that night.  Although the 4 champions were the one on court, this was an interactive event.  Prior to the exhibition, the public was invited to vote online to see which two champions will face off against each other.  And to keep the suspense, we did a round of live voting using a decibel meter on the night of the exhibition for the audience to get in one last vote, so we literally did not know which two champions will play each other until just before the match started.  In the end the match up of Garron Palmer and Bradley Graham received the highest vote!  The exhibition featured a total of three matches with 2 men's singles and a men's doubles.  All of the matches were 3 setters that showcased our champions' skills and athleticism.  In between matches, we also had our raffle draw which included 2 top of the line Li-Ning racquets. 
All in all, our Jamaican debut was a huge success!  We would like to thank Zacca Grafx Inc. for designing our business cards and banner, CBA for the use of their facility, BG Designs for designing our posters, Racers Water as the official water sponsor for the exhibition, Epic Technologies for the use of their projector, and Li-Ning Canada for their support throughout this process.   Also, we would like to thank our many amazing volunteers: Ruth Williams for organizing some of the clinics in Kingston and recruiting volunteers for the exhibition, Howard Ranger for organizing all of the clinics and participants in Mandeville, Sean Wilson for taking us to the Bailey's when we stayed in Mandeville, Corelene Bailey for sharing your beautiful home with us, and to Kibwe Smith, Katherine Wynter, Jemarey Gordon, Demarley Edwards, Willory Myles, Kareem Chin, Shelby Stephenson, Kemar Valentine, Toni-ann Lyew, Kathryn Pendergast, and Kerrie-ann Tucker for volunteering their time for the exhibition.  And of course, thank you to all of our participants and people who have supported us in our project.  This event could not have been as successful without your support!  We look forward to coming back to Jamaica and working with all of you again in the near future!

Lastly, we would love to hear from you about how we did.  Please take a few minutes to fill out this little survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/BF9VHDT
!!!THANK YOU!!!