As the fifth edition of the Barbados Road Tennis Open enters its final stretch, the sport’s governing body has celebrated the tournament’s impressive competitive quality while highlighting major strides made in growing the game at the grassroots youth level. Barbados Road Tennis Association president Frederick Blunt shared his positive assessment of the ongoing event, which will wrap up its 2024 iteration with a highly anticipated championship Saturday at the Garfield Sobers Gymnasium.
Blunt acknowledged that the tournament faced a handful of minor disruptions in its opening stages, but emphasized that the overall standard of play has far exceeded expectations heading into the finals. This year’s title matches will feature a rematch of 2023’s dramatic showdowns, with both defending champions gunning to retain their crowns against familiar challengers. In the men’s senior final, reigning title holder Shakeem Nurse will go head-to-head with three-time tournament champion Mark “Venom” Griffith, the veteran competitor who is hunting to reclaim the title he last held before Nurse’s 2023 win. On the women’s side, defending champion Sheldene Waldron will clash with challenger Kim Holder as she aims to defend her championship.
Blunt made his remarks Thursday during a community event in Welches, St. Michael, where the Bridgetown Lions Club officially handed over three newly refurbished courts and a set of new tennis equipment to students at George Lamming Primary School. The handover marked a key milestone in the association’s multi-year push to integrate road tennis into primary school programming across the country, an initiative designed to attract young new talent to the traditionally community-focused sport.
According to Blunt, engagement with primary schools has grown steadily over the past five years, ever since the association launched its grassroots outreach strategy. The National Sports Council now supports the effort by running an annual national primary school road tennis tournament, which has steadily improved in participation and competitive quality year over year. The Barbados Road Tennis Association complements this work by providing on-the-ground support to participating schools, ranging from court resurfacing and painting to coaching guidance for school administrators and physical education teachers looking to build strong campus programs.
In a key update on resourcing, Blunt confirmed the National Sports Council has expanded its road tennis coaching team by adding two new full-time coaches, bringing the total number of active coaches assigned to school programs to three. This expansion has already translated to more consistent, high-quality training for student players across the island. Blunt noted that the push to prioritize youth development emerged from a critical observation the association made when it took office: nearly 85% of all registered competitive road tennis players at that time were over the age of 40, creating a long-term risk to the sport’s sustainability without targeted youth outreach. That targeted investment, Blunt said, has already yielded tremendous results, with hundreds of young players now joining competitive pipelines across the country.
Despite these wins, Blunt stressed that there is still more work to be done to fully embed road tennis in primary and secondary education across Barbados. He argued that three full-time coaches are not enough to meet the growing demand for school programming, calling for the total number of coaches to be expanded to at least five or six. Blunt added that the association also aims to bring more gender diversity to the coaching workforce, noting that at least one of the new coaching positions should be filled by a female coach to better support growing numbers of young female players joining the sport.