An­dre E Bap­tiste

Most of the good in T&T cen­tres around our youth in sport. Let's look at some of them.

Je­hue Gor­don

A young man with tremen­dous pedi­gree, not just in his fam­i­ly, but al­so in his ed­u­ca­tion (Queens Roy­al Col­lege). He has al­ways main­tained a strong lev­el of hu­mil­i­ty while per­son­i­fy­ing a qui­et con­fi­dence.The fact, that he was able to ap­pre­ci­ate the val­ue of home life and home­made ed­u­ca­tion at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies has al­so demon­strat­ed his thought process­es, and his in­tel­li­gence.The com­fort of hav­ing per­sons around you, who you know and trust, is vi­tal­ly im­por­tant in any sport­ing ath­lete's growth. I will al­ways re­mem­ber the dis­ap­point­ment on his face af­ter the 400 me­tres fi­nals at the Lon­don Olympics.But you al­so sensed that he was de­ter­mined to bounce back and could do this. And in Au­gust at the World Cham­pi­onships, he did just that, cruis­ing in­to the fi­nal with the words "I am hav­ing fun," which trans­lat­ed means, I am feel­ing very good with my state of mind. I am go­ing to win this. I re­mem­ber telling him that he would win and he just smiled.He is our fu­ture, but we should not put too much pres­sure on him, he has a very good man­age­ment and coach­ing team, filled of high qual­i­ty in­di­vid­u­als, who seek his best in­ter­est. This is crit­i­cal for all young sport­ing per­sons.

Dar­ren Michael Bra­vo

With­out ques­tion, this young­ster is pos­si­bly the best bats­man in the re­gion, in terms of tech­nique, skill and shot se­lec­tion.His nat­ur­al game seems to be mold­ed on test crick­et, but he has demon­strat­ed that he can adapt to both one day crick­et and T20.It is the best news ever, that be­fore the end of the year, the West In­dies will be play­ing five Tests, two against In­dia and three against New Zealand, both over­seas se­ries, as it will give Bra­vo a great op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­tin­ue his progress.We need to al­low young Bra­vo, time to be his own man and es­tab­lish his own lega­cy. There is a strong sense of de­ter­mi­na­tion and pur­pose, added to his ed­u­ca­tion­al back­ground (Fa­ti­ma Col­lege), and his ded­i­ca­tion to train­ing.

Ni­jsane Phillip

Af­ter a tremen­dous per­for­mance in the Lon­don Olympics, with a fourth place fin­ish in the Match Sprint, Phillips is back in search of his dream. His strong en­durance and per­se­ver­ance speaks vol­ume for him in the fu­ture and with the prop­er guid­ance and sup­port, he can con­tin­ue to proud­ly car­ry our flag.We must just en­sure that we con­tin­ue to sup­port him, with more ac­tion than words, when and as soon as he needs as­sis­tance.What gives me strength in his pow­ers, is his men­tal ca­pac­i­ty, which at the mo­ment, is par­tic­u­lar­ly strong.

Ker­shorn Wal­cott

A gold medal at the Lon­don Olympics, fol­lowed by a dis­ap­point­ing fin­ish a year lat­er in the World Cham­pi­onships, needs to be mea­sured care­ful­ly with se­ri­ous dis­cus­sion and some in­tro­spec­tion on what went wrong.Cor­rec­tive ac­tion is im­por­tant, but not at the ex­pense of erod­ing Wal­cott's self-con­fi­dence. And while, there were er­rors in 2013, these are life lessons and once they can be cor­rect­ed and he can be­come fit again and spend more time with his coach, then he is young enough to suc­ceed again.He has the right de­meanour and ap­pears to have recog­nised what may have gone awry, let us hope his han­dlers do like­wise and look at them.

Dy­lan Carter

When you watch the progress of Dy­lan Carter, it is both re­veal­ing and pleas­ing. A sil­ver medal­ist at the World Youth Swim­ming Cham­pi­onships in Dubai, this 6ft young man, is on­ly a boy with a gra­cious kin­dred spir­it and friend­ly hap­py de­meanour, which makes him dan­ger­ous to all his op­po­nents now and in the fu­ture."There is noth­ing but de­ter­mi­na­tion in what he does and what he wants to achieve. He has to make a de­ci­sion on his swim­ming races soon since he wants to swim "them all."He wants to en­joy him­self and not be lim­it­ed and this is im­por­tant. He is def­i­nite­ly one for the fu­ture, along with many oth­ers who trav­elled to Dubai, such as Joshua Ro­many, Kris­ten Julien, Jonathon Ramkissoon and Tyler Mar­tin.There is a com­mon thread in all of these sport­ing per­sons, and that is fam­i­ly–and fam­i­ly sup­port, all of them will ac­knowl­edge the sup­port of their par­ents and close fam­i­ly friends and al­so their re­spec­tive coach­es, who through­out their for­ma­tive years and now have giv­en them the train­ing and be­lief, they can suc­ceed.