Pan Am Marvellites Netball Team, Seawell Airport
(Grantley Adams International Airport) Barbados - 1973
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TriniView.com Reporters
Interview Recorded: March 19, 2006
Posted: March 10, 2007
TRINIVIEW.COM: When the world tournament was held in Trinidad in 1979, you didn't play. Why was that?
PEGGY: Just a few days before the tournament began, my wrist got broken. The late Jean Pierre felt it was too late to bring in the substitute, besides which, she couldn't see me not being a member of the team having contributed so much. I attended practice every morning shooting accurately with my right hand because I couldn't use my left hand. Although I was there warming up and everything, I did not play. The newspaper headlines would always be, "Would Peggy be fit enough to play today?" or "Peggy is doubtful". Everybody believed they saw me on the field, but I didn't play. Up to this day people still believe that I played. In the evenings when I arrived at the court, they would ask, "Peggy yuh playing today?" It was a weird experience for me when people said I stood out on the field. I had put in a lot of service in the team before 1979, and being an integral part of the game they just couldn't leave me out. That is why so many people believed I was there, but I was just there in spirit. There were two other players, Marcia and Sherril who were kind of half-Chinese, so that could also account for why people thought it was me. I believe if it was somewhere else besides Trinidad and Tobago, I believe I would have been able to play because of the medical facilities and the know-how that would have been available. If we had the knowledge I would have been able to play. I still believe up to this day, if I had played, no way it was going to be a three-way tie. I believe in my heart that we were going to be winners.
Although we had a national team of twelve players and two reserves, the game was with seven players. Every practice before the tournament you have the first seven players. The other five players and the two reserves always play against the first seven players. About a week before the tournament, Lystra asked Jean, "How come everyday when you all practice, is only about three, maybe five goals for the most? You all cannot beat the reserve team convincingly." Jean said to Lystra, "It's Peggy." Lystra responded, "Peggy?" Jean said, "Yes."
I remember my old coach Margaret King, who was a member of Marvellites, used to come down in the mornings during our national practice and she would be rooting for the reserve team because obviously, I was on the reserve team. She would say things like, "Come on Peggy, you know you can do it." The next practice session Jean and I played the combination. I had joined Jean's club and grew up through the ranks and played with Jean. Although I was Jean's partner, when you reach on the national team, you separate. We had this combination going, why change it? The morning when they put us to play together we beat the reserve team by thirty goals. That was the last time I practiced.
TRINIVIEW.COM: What are some of your memories of Jean Pierre?
PEGGY: I remember Jean used to pray a lot and would try to guide us. She left school early for personal reasons so she had to finish school later on. We had a kind of mother and daughter type of relationship. When the team was staying at the Hilton Hotel, she was so adamant about me being with the team, she didn't wait for me to get there. She actually came at my home to get me. Jean and I were very close. My thing was always before 1979 and after 1979 - that's when I think I got most of my recognition - it was when Jean left. I was always the second goal shooter. On our team I played goal attack because I was younger than Jean. The combination was, I would play the ball out and pass to Jean. When Jean left, I automatically became the goal shooter. It was after 1979 that I really held the team together until 1983. Although Jean was the coach, she was also a member of the delegation therefore she had to attend meetings so I found myself coaching the team in 1983.
My last tournament, I played and also coached a team with players eighteen years younger than I was. When it was time to go on the court they couldn't bring the ball to me because I was in a goal shooter position so I had to go out and still carry the ball to them. Sometimes up to this day when I play, the goal attack I am playing with, who is junior to me would say, "Oh gosh Miss, take the penalties nah." I brought a lot of the players on the team, some as goal attacks and so on. So 1983, was my last year, making it a stint of eleven years. The year 1972, was the secondary school and the national team at the same time, straight from one tour into the other. In 1973, I was out and 1974, the tournament was in Trinidad. We were still juniors so we had to wait until the softer games came. By 1975, we went on the world tournament in Auckland, New Zealand. We played the easier games because they still had this thing, "Jean play with somebody else", so I had to play with Veronica Mc Donald, and Jean played with Cyrenia Charles or Ingrid Blackman. I remember in 1976, I was injured two weeks before leaving to go on a tournament, that's when the substitute went. In 1978, we didn't have any Caribbean tournaments, we went to Australia. One week before the tournament I broke my right hand and the reserve came in. In 1979, one week again before I played in the world tournament, I injured my wrist. All the Caribbean tours they had, I was there.
TRINIVIEW.COM: Apart from Jean Pierre, which other player or players would you single out as having enjoyed playing with?
PEGGY: That is difficult to say because during my time we had different players at different times. But, I think of the players whom I admired besides Jean Pierre... funny enough but they weren't shooters... I admired center court players like Pinky Drayton. However, she didn't make the world team. She was there in 1975 though. I enjoy watching people handle the ball. I like watching people pass and run off the ball. I think Pinky Drayton and Angela Burke-Brown were very good at that. I liked Sherril Peters because when she gets the ball she moves with flair. Cheryl never liked to stand up when she is playing. She used to play defense for our club and she was also the captain for the world team that won. She also played win defense for the national team. because back then. they had people like Janet Bailey and Althea Thomas-Luces in the back. Then there was Jennifer Frank because she was one of the players who started in school with me as a junior player before moving on to the national team, although we were on opposite sides. With Althea it was a fight. Regardless of who you were you had to pass through Althea, you had no choice. She was rugged. I used to admire her when she was playing for Trinidad and Tobago, but not playing against me. I had some very bad experiences playing with Althea. She was tough and she had a fighting spirit. Another player that stood out was Angela Brown; she was a high jumper in a secondary school. When she came to town to play with a team from Sangre Grande they saw her ability and that was it. She went straight on to the national team and she was about fifteen going on sixteen years old.
My little sister also made the national team at the age of fifteen. You also have people like Marjorie Thomas who never really made it to the national team and it wasn't because of lack of ability, it was because she was so strong-headed and very independent in her thinking. She couldn't take the pressure from the domineering way Lystra had. Lystra was a very nice person but very stern and very colonial because she was from that era. I think she was one of the persons I emulated throughout my life. Although Jean was the mommy-type and supportive, Lystra was always the person you looked up too. She didn't have any children, so we were like her children in netball. There was also a girl called Deanne Jackson from Morvant whom I played with at Progressive. Deanne also had a fighting attitude. She used to tell Lystra, as it is and that was the end of Deanne's career, because you couldn't challenge Lystra. She was nice and she used to give us everything, but she was the boss. Sometimes on reflection you wonder why she was so stern, but some of the girls she had to deal with, she had to be like that. Dealing with some people in Port of Spain and the environs isn't easy.
When I went to Port of Spain in 1966, it was a rude awakening coming from the country. The attitude was different and playing among them was something else too. Port of Spain and the environs produced some of the best players. Most of the national players were from Morvant, Laventille and Diego Martin... those are tough areas. When people like Sherril Peters, Theresa Mc Claron, and I got into the game you have to wonder how we did it. But, we liked it, and besides, it was a poor man's sport. My mother couldn't send me to play tennis or buy a racket in those days. Back then, it was the sixties and tennis was an elite game, so you played where your class was. If you were from the roots you played close to your roots. I fell in love with the netball and that is why I stayed. South also had some of the best players like Irmin Huggins and Cynthia Cragwell and others. Irmin was just like a tomboy. She was a slim, red-skinned, past national basketballer/netballer and more like the men's player than the women's player. She was tough and hard but she had some style. I came from an era with players you could learn a few things from. Enid Brown was my first captain. She was also a teacher, and once she talked, you listened. I was always humble in the sense that who ever is towing the line you listen to them, but we were not very close. We were from different clubs plus the age difference; she was the elder one.
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