Glasgow 2014 volunteers reunite with athletes

0 The volunteers meet Montserrat athletes at the training ground A group of Glasgow Commonwealth Games volunteers have travelled 4,000 miles to the tiny Caribbean island of Montserrat to be reunited with the athletes they looked after in 2014.

Mary Barber, Jan Grunberg, Clara Pankhurst and Maureen Whittaker got on so well with the four sprinters and their coaches in Glasgow that they decided to pay them a visit.

To mark the second anni- versary of the opening of the Games last Saturday, the Scots volunteers reunited with athletes Arlen Skerritt and Lester Ryan, chef de mission Valerie Samuels, coach Wilson Scotland and the island’s athletics president Bruce Farara.

When not competing, Skerritt is an air traffic controller at the island’s airport and Ryan works in the postal service.

The tiny British Overseas Territory they represent was the second smallest team of the 71 that took part in the Games – appropriately nick- named “the friendly Games”. The volunteers also met the island’s Premier, Donaldson Romeo, during their nine-day trip.

Barber said: “It was lovely to meet everyone again. Before the Games none of the volunteers had known each other.

“The Games brought us together and we had such a good time that we kept in touch.

“The Montserrat team often spoke about their beautiful, tropical island, which was interesting for us, and we decided that one day we would visit.

“Even though they knew we were planning on coming over, they were still surprised to see us.”

Montserrat, known as the Emerald Isle of the Caribbean for its resemblance to the coast of Ireland and for its Irish heritage, is just 10 miles long and 7 miles wide. More than 18,000 volunteers contributed to the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games – selected from 53,000 applicants.