The Barbados Soccer Academy’s (BSA) seventh Summer Camp started yesterday at Combermere School.The camp, which will be officially launched next Monday, offers soccer, cricket, basketball, hockey, netball, lawn and road tennis, dancing, and arts and craft, among other activities.Director and founder of the camp, Jabez “Jack” Bovell, said that based on “past projections” he expected that by Friday, the deadline for registration, there would be 400 participants. Since registration started about two weeks ago, 200 people had signed up, 150 of them registering yesterday morning. Bovell said the campers had the opportunity to choose what they wanted to do throughout the course of the day, as well as visiting attractions such as Farley Hill National Park.He added: “The camp is used basically as a catchment area for soccer players.” Over the past six years, 17 of the older players who entered the BSA development programme after having attended the summer camp have obtained scholarships to some of the top universities in the United States. Bovell, a former senior vice-president of the Barbados Football Association, stated: “The strategic intent of the camp is to have a continuous development programme.” He explained that in the programme past campers could come on Saturday mornings and train, and then they were able to play in various competitions; but the intent was to “get scholarships” because the academy also “does academics and training for the Scholastic Aptitude Tests (SAT)”.The former sports coordinator for the Division of Youth Affairs explained that most of BSA’s members came from their annual camp and entered the development programme. He reported that one of the main aims of the academy was to take members overseas so they could compete. Bovell added that each year the Under-13s go to Trinidad to compete in football while the older members from the Under-17 and Under 19 age groups went to the United States to compete against various colleges and universities. (DG)
