Of­fi­cials of the T&T Sec­ondary Schools Track and Field As­so­ci­a­tion (TTSST­FA) and the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ic & Ad­min­is­tra­tions (NAAA) met at the of­fices of the NAAA at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um, Cou­va on Jan­u­ary, 6.

The meet­ing of the two or­gan­i­sa­tions was the first in re­cent years and was&nb­sp;held dur­ing the sit­ting of a NAAA Tech­ni­cal De­vel­op­ment Com­mit­tee.

The TTSS­FA del­e­ga­tion was led by Pres­i­dent Phillip Al­lard and in­clud­ed Sec­ond Vice-Pres­i­dent Janelle Ed­wards, Sec­re­tary Andy Joseph and Pub­lic Re­la­tions of­fi­cer In­dra Ram­s­ingh-Ge­of­frey.

The NAAA team was head­ed by its pres­i­dent Ephraim Ser­rette and in­clud­ed its Sec­ond Vice Pres­i­dent Al­lan Ba­boolal, Sec­re­tary Dex­ter Voisin, Board mem­bers Durly Lu­cas and Dawn Wash­ing­ton.

Al­so present were sev­er­al tech­ni­cal of­fi­cials. Among the is­sues dis­cussed were: of­fi­ci­at­ing, tim­ing, pho­to fin­ish and re­sults, sched­ul­ing and sanc­tion­ing.

Both par­ties agreed that the of­fi­cials to op­er­ate at sec­ondary schools track and field meets would be trained through sem­i­nars and work­shops.

Some of the work­shops will be held on the days of De­vel­op­ment meets, two hours be­fore the starts of the meets and the par­tic­i­pants will use the meets to do the prac­ti­cal as­pects.

The first work­shop is set to take place at the first De­vel­op­ment Meet in Jan­u­ary set for Jan­u­ary 14. Al­so agreed up­on is the set­ting up a data­base of of­fi­cials from the NAAA, Pri­ma­ry and Sec­ondary Schools and vol­un­teers.

In ad­di­tion, stu­dents of sec­ondary schools will al­so be trained to as­sist in the event of short­age of of­fi­cials at a meet.

The NAAA has con­curred to as­sist with by pro­vid­ing its tim­ing and pho­to-fin­ish sys­tem to record re­sults. The zon­al cham­pi­onships will be in­clud­ed on the NAAA cal­en­dar.

One of main out­comes of the meet­ing is the de­ci­sion of the NAAA to sanc­tion all the TTSST­FA meets. Sanc­tion­ing is to be done the NAAA's Tech­ni­cal De­vel­op­ment Com­mit­tee head­ed by Durly Lu­cas who in­di­cat­ed the Com­mit­tee's avail­abil­i­ty to work with the TTSST­FA in the for­ma­tion of its pro­grammes.

The TTSS­FA and NAAA al­so plan to meet with the Min­istries of Ed­u­ca­tion and Sports and Youth Af­fairs to dis­cuss the fol­low­ing:

(1) Mod­el­ling of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies and Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go's Phys­i­cal Ed­u­ca­tion (P.E.) pro­gramme to that of the G.C. Fos­ter Teach­ers Col­lege in Ja­maica with the aim of im­prov­ing the skills of of P.E. teach­ers;

(2) Teach­ing schol­ar­ships to G.C. Fos­ter Teach­ers Col­lege;

(3) For­mu­la­tion of re­la­tion­ships be­tween clubs and schools in their ar­eas with the in­ten­tion of re­solv­ing the chal­lenges of stu­dents are forced to de­cide to com­pete in NAAA meets ahead of those held by TTSS­FA;

(3) In­clu­sion of the Pri­ma­ry Schools Track and Field As­so­ci­a­tion in fur­ther dis­cus­sions.