President of the Antigua and Barbuda National Domino Association (ABNDA), Carol-Faye Bynoe, said the body is actively seeking to grow its membership while mitigating against the longstanding belief that the game is only associated with bars and or ‘rum shops’.
Speaking recently on the Good Morning Jojo sports show, Bynoe opined that domino has not received the level of recognition and or support it truly deserves.
“I think people still look at domino as a game and not really a sport and some people would even refer to it as a rum shop sport, but when you visit other places you see the high respect and regards that this sport gets from other people worldwide. We are trying to change the mindset here in Antigua because even to get coverage sometimes is a problem,” she said.
Bynoe’s statement comes even as the association prepares to host the 2025 World Domino Championships from August 10th to the 18th.
Pointing out that in larger countries the game is highly regarded with teams, often times, competing for large amounts of prize monies, the domino chief said that mind sports in general, are often overlooked because they are physical in nature.
“Everybody cannot be an athlete, everybody cannot be a basketball player but you have to use your mind with everything regardless if you’re playing cricket, football or whatever, you have to be smart and be able to remember certain techniques. The fact that all of us cannot be physical then people need to respect the fact that you need to work some part of the anatomy and so if we choose to be a chess player, a warri player or a domino player, it’s a mind sport and it needs the respect it should get,” the president said.
Bynoe assured that the association is more than playing its role in spreading the gospel of domino to those willing to listen.
“In recent times we’ve targeted [Antigua] State College students, so we have some students from [there] who actually play domino and they have a club called Legacy that’s registered with the association and we have people of different calibre playing the sport. We are going to go into the primary schools; we want to start a business league but has been put on the back-burner because we are in preparation mode for world tournament. We are trying our best to see how we can broaden our horizon,” she said.
Antigua and Barbuda will seek to become the first country to win four world championship titles when they host the tournament in August.
Teams from Anguilla, Barbados, Grenada, Guyana, St. Kitts & Nevis, Dominica, St. Lucia, St. Maarten, USA, St. Vincent & the Grenadines and Montserrat, will join hosts Antigua and Barbuda for the championships.
