Sean Nero

Carif­ta Un­der-18 gold medal­list Tyriq Hors­ford and sprint cham­pi­on Akan­ni His­lop will re­turn to com­pe­ti­tion in two weeks, to dis­play their re­mark­able ath­leti­cism at the Sec­ondary School Track and Field Cham­pi­onships.

They will show off their skills at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Wood­brook dur­ing the two-day meet from April 20 to 21. The meet­ing is ex­pect­ed to at­tract more than 500 ath­letes from state and pri­vate­ly-fund­ed ed­u­ca­tion cen­tres.

Philip Al­lard, pres­i­dent of the Sec­ondary Schools Track and Field As­so­ci­a­tion, ex­pressed his ex­cite­ment about Hors­ford's and His­lop's par­tic­i­pa­tion un­der the ban­ner of the To­ba­go Zone of the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

An­tic­i­pa­tion re­lat­ed to the Cham­pi­onships had been height­ened with news that de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons To­co Sec­ondary School in­di­cat­ed that its ath­letes in­tend­ed to rep­re­sent the school with mer­it, again, this year.

"Our sport at this point in time is a zone sport. Even though we have top girls school and boys school, it's a zone sports and To­ba­go is the de­fend­ing zone for the longest while. So they are al­ways look­ing for­ward to come, to par­tic­i­pate and win again. They have about two Carif­ta gold medal­lists.

So they have some re­al­ly good ath­letes in there. They are com­ing with as many ath­letes as have qual­i­fied.

"A meet is a goal where they could test them­selves to see where they have reached, where they can test them­selves by their com­pa­tri­ots and the oth­er ath­letes. So, this is a big step for all the ath­letes in schools to test their abil­i­ties with oth­er ath­letes, those who are com­ing from Carif­ta. If I were an ath­lete, cer­tain­ly, I would be test­ing my abil­i­ty to com­pete with those ath­letes," Al­lard said.

He con­tin­ued, "The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion is very hap­py for any­thing that could be done to de­vel­op stu­dents holis­ti­cal­ly. The min­istry of ed­u­ca­tion has been our ma­jor spon­sor for the longest while. We still need oth­er spon­sors, how­ev­er, for oth­er types of prizes, oth­er than medals that will mo­ti­vate stu­dents. We want to give schools prizes in re­la­tion to help­ing them fix their sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties, that kind of thing.

"So, where­as the min­istry of ed­u­ca­tion has been do­ing quite well for medals and for re­fresh­ment and the like trans­port, there are oth­er things we think would be nec­es­sary from a spon­sor. So the win­ning school may get new equip­ment, that kind of stuff. That is the way we would like to go."

The or­gan­is­ing com­mit­tee had cause for fur­ther ex­cite­ment cit­ing a deal to be signed with re­gion­al broad­cast­er Dig­i­cel Sports­Max.

Al­lard was con­vinced that the lat­est de­vel­op­ment would bol­ster the rep­u­ta­tion of the Sec­ondary School track and field cir­cuit.

He said his team wel­comed this lat­est de­vel­op­ment, cit­ing the slow pace of cor­po­rate as­sis­tance for the stag­ing of the meet­ing, which had been around for more than three decades. De­spite is­sues re­lat­ed to sup­port­ing spon­sors, how­ev­er, the ed­u­ca­tion min­istry re­mained the ti­tle spon­sor of the event.

Al­lard con­tin­ued, "We want to bring more ex­cite­ment. That is why we have start­ed a process of hav­ing a me­dia launch, mar­ket­ing. What I have seen, in T&T we are not a pay­ing pub­lic.

"Most of our sports suf­fered from a lack of spec­ta­tors. We be­lieve we may be able to start a process of fill­ing a sta­di­um through sec­ondary school sports, through prop­er mar­ket­ing. There must be spon­sor­ship of course, and an or­gan­i­sa­tion like Dig­i­cel Sports­max to tele­vise it glob­al­ly. That may spur on stu­dents to par­tic­i­pate. It may mo­ti­vate peo­ple to come to the sports know­ing that this thing is be­ing tele­vised."

Asked about his or­gan­i­sa­tion's re­la­tion­ship with the gov­ern­ing Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ics Ad­min­is­tra­tion (NAAA), he said it was a work in progress.