The Antigua and Barbuda Tennis Association (ABTA) — for the first time since 2018 — has submitted a nomination for the National Sports Awards.
The body’s president and former national tennis player Cordell Williams confirmed the nomination of the country’s highest ever ranked professional doubles player, Jody Maginley, as their lone submission for the 2025 instalment of the national awards ceremony slated for late February.
Williams said Maginley was consulted ahead of the submission while explaining why the ABTA opted to submit only a male nominee.
“I believe he has a good chance of being Sportsman of the Year based on the results that he has this year. In terms of our females, we have to do more to get our females more competition. The reason why we did not nominate any female this year because they only took part in the Billie Jean Cup so, hopefully, next year we can get one or two more of our females playing a little more tournament so they could have stats we can put forward for them,” he said.
Williams had made it clear in previous years that the association was not keen on making submissions based on what he thought was an unfair judging process. In 2023, Williams said a decision to exclude the association’s athletes from the National Sports Awards by not making nominations was influenced by requests from the players themselves that their names not be submitted for consideration in any of the categories.
Maginley, speaking recently on the Good Morning Jojo sport show, revealed he had been asked to assist in the process.
“I was contacted … maybe two weeks ago, and asked to help them prepare just a summary of my year, and so that’s what I did, because I understand that tennis is not a sport that’s easy to follow, and a lot of people don’t understand the tiers of tennis and just how competitive tennis is.
“Think about track and field, Tiger the kiteboarder, myself with tennis, there’s so many different sport to really understand, so I just tried to present information as clear as possible and as easy to follow as possible, because I know tennis is not an easy sport to follow,” the athlete said.
