Va’a V12 team takes out double achievement in awards

Caption:  Va’a V12 Women’s team coach Jonathan Kassman.

By MATTHEW VARI

Sunday, June 12, 2016 (Sunday Chronicle, PNG)

IT was double the celebrations for the Va’a V12 Women’s team when their historic win from last year’s Pacific Games was recognized at the 2016 SP Sports Awards when they took out both the Sports Official of the Year and the Team of the Year awards.

The Women’s Va’a V12 team was the team that edged out world champions Tahiti to claim a famous title in the women’s V12 500m Va’a event at the Port Moresby 2015 Pacific Games last year.

Speaking after receiving his sport official of the year award, team coach Johnathan Kassman said the team’s success was one of tremendous support from the national, sporting ,and personal fronts.

“On behalf of me and the girls I should have acknowledged the government of Papua New Guinea through their tremendous support we were able to achieve a lot.”

“Emotionally, physically for the girls it was a long long journey- something that we probably won’t emulate in a long time because the support was overwhelming and it helped us achieve so much.”

“Credit to the girls they stuck in there, some of them are village girls that stayed away from their families for so many months, we only had two working girls that sacrificed a lot of working time and a great management team my mom and sisters who stuck by me,” Kassman said.

Mr Kassman said the award had made the team believe and also women in the crew and womenfolk all around the country in the fruits of commitment dedication and the right support network to achieve the impossible.

“In terms of our sport- it has put us on par with some of the big players in our sport of Va’a, where when we first represented in 1995 no one even knew where Papua New Guinea was in the Mini Pacific Games in Palau, and now we go to the World Sprints and even the Tahitian are giving that due respect.”

He, however, said the challenge for his team and that of sport in general in the country was complacency in achieving the impossible to lax in maintaining the achievement.

“Among that respect I am a strong believer in hard work and commitment to the team, unfortunately, that’s been waning, after success us Papua New Guineans tends to say that we beat the world and we relax, I guess the message is to get up there in four years’ time and do it again to get gold especially when nobody is looking at us and the glory is not there we have got to push hard.”

“I guess all the elite athletes and sports administrators that have gone before me will recognize that nobody knows the early morning starts, the late afternoon starts, or even the sacrifices you leave your family upon and it’s a credit to what we achieved and in sport in general.”