Va’a reaps toil’s rewards

 EIGHTEEN months of rigorous training and dedication from the athletes and those involved has paid off handsomely, PNG Va’a women’s coach Jonathan Kassman said.

Kassman, who is the son of PNG’s chef de mission Richard Kassman, said he was overjoyed at the performance his relatively inexperienced team put in to claim gold in the V12 women’s 500m sprint last week.

“For this campaign (2015 Pacific Games), we started 16 months ago with a lot of sacrifice and commitment from our paddlers. 

“Most of our girls come from villages. 

“They had to leave their families and live in Port Moresby to train. We have two or three women who have formal jobs and they had to excuse themselves once or twice to attend training.

“I’m very pleased with the performance we put in to come up triumphant — winning gold against world-class teams. 

“To have done it against world champions Tahiti was a reward for the many sacrifices made by myself, the manager, assistant coach, athletes and everyone involved.

“Never once did we rule out the possibility of winning gold — in fact, we were quietly aiming at winning it.

“There were times where I did question myself whether I was pushing the girls too much at training but they were such a committed group, they responded well every single time,” he said

Kassman said that they couldn’t have done it without the Government’s ‘Go-for-Gold’ (G4G) funding initiative, which was aimed at assisting sporting codes prepare for the Pacific Games in the best possible way.

“The squad is relatively inexperienced in terms of world-class competition but thanks to the G4G funding, we  attended some competitions abroad to get us to a level where we could be competitive.”

He hoped to have the team attend more competitions abroad to better some aspects of their strokes as there was still more areas to improve on.

Kassman previously played rugby union for the Wanderers alongside his brother Api but later switched to paddling after a serious knee injury. 

He became the code’s in-country manager in 2007 and his love for the sport has grown ever since. 

His mum, Pole Kila Kassman, is the va’a woman’s team manageress.

Kassman encouraged more people from across the country to take up the sport as paddling was part of the nation’s cultural heritage and that there was a real chance of being consistent competitors on the world stage.