Sean Nero

Five-time First Cit­i­zens Sports­woman of the Year Cleopa­tra Borel ex­cit­ed teenagers at­tend­ing Tues­day's in­stall­ment of the At­lantic and Min­istry of Sport 17th An­nu­al Sport Desk Lead­er­ship Sym­po­sium held at the Pe­trea Hall at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence, Ma­coya, de­clar­ing that self-dis­ci­pline en­sured she was ready to con­queror the world both ath­let­i­cal­ly and ed­u­ca­tion­al­ly.

The cham­pi­on shot put­ter was at the time re­spond­ing to ques­tions from a male par­tic­i­pant who first want­ed to know if she had a back-up plan con­sid­er­ing that one ma­jor in­jury was all it took end a flour­ish­ing sport­ing ca­reer, and bar­ring in­jury, if she planned to throw a met­al ball for the rest of her nat­ur­al life, or had a con­tin­gency plan to live com­fort­ably in re­tire­ment.

"I have dealt with many in­juries dur­ing my time and nev­er some­thing to se­ri­ous to end my ca­reer. I do not want to throw the shot put for the rest of my life. I went to uni­ver­si­ty. I have a bach­e­lor's de­gree. I have a Mas­ter's de­gree. The de­grees are re­lat­ed to health and well­ness pro­mo­tion and it's just a con­tin­u­a­tion of what I have done as an ath­lete. Even if you are an ath­lete and you en­joy com­pet­ing, there is life af­ter that. You can get in­to man­age­ment and there are a host of things you can do.

Nev­er do one thing and pi­geon hold your­self. Al­ways have a back-up plan and hav­ing a good ed­u­ca­tion is al­ways a great back-up plan, be­cause no one can take that from you," she ex­plained.

The cham­pi­on Pan Amer­i­can Games gold medal­list was a past pupil of Ma­yaro Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School. She suc­cess­ful­ly wrote the Com­mon En­trance Ex­am and passed for Ma­yaro Com­pos­ite School and con­tin­ued on­to St Stephens Col­lege. Her de­sire to pur­sue high­er ed­u­ca­tion took her to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land, Bal­ti­more, USA, where she earned a de­gree in Health Psy­chol­o­gy and Pre-phys­i­cal Ther­a­py, be­fore mov­ing on to Vir­ginia Tech (Vir­ginia Poly­tech­nic In­sti­tute and State Uni­ver­si­ty) where she at­tained a Mas­ter's De­gree in Ed­u­ca­tion and Health Pro­mo­tions.

"I am sure I could have done some­thing else if I want­ed to be fa­mous and some­thing eas­i­er if I want­ed to be rich. But that's not why I do it. I do it be­cause this is what I love. It is what I en­joy do­ing the most and I think it's why I have a big im­pact on young peo­ple like your­selves, to let you know that you can dream. You can come from Ma­yaro, you could dream about go­ing to the Olympics, trav­el the world do­ing what you want to do. I hope I can in­spire you guys to give your best life a shot, to en­joy what you en­joy do­ing the most," she said.

As ea­ger and bril­liant young stu­dents con­tin­ued to en­gage the ac­com­plished ath­lete, Borel was asked to re­spond to con­cerns re­gard­ing sport de­vel­op­ment in the na­tion's pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools. She ex­pressed sat­is­fac­tion with ex­ist­ing sys­tems de­signed to at­tract and de­vel­op ath­letes with­in the school sys­tem.

"Things are a lot bet­ter from when I was grow­ing up. My vi­sion is that we should have a sys­tem to iden­ti­fy ath­letes, iden­ti­fy peo­ple who want to be in man­age­ment, even med­ical. Sport med­i­cine is a huge field. There are a lot of med­ical things that are at­tached to sport. I just think that we need to de­vel­op a stronger sys­tem to get peo­ple from point 'A' to point 'B'. I am sure that the peo­ple in charge are work­ing on that and when I am in charge, I'll work on that," said Borel.

She proud­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ed what pa­tri­o­tism meant to her and ex­tolled sim­ple virtues that could be­come part of every­day life in T&T. "I spent time around Amer­i­cans and when the say 'this is Amer­i­ca!' it means some­thing dif­fer­ent from when we say 'this is Trinidad!' We just have to un­der­stand that this is par­adise; 365 days of love­ly sun­shine. We have gor­geous beach­es. We have in­dus­try and in­fra­struc­ture.

"As a young per­son I think that you can take care of our coun­try in small ways, like not lit­ter­ing, dri­ving like a de­cent per­son; say­ing hel­lo to your neigh­bor and just mak­ing your sur­round­ings pleas­ant. And when you do that the next per­son will en­cour­age an­oth­er per­son. I think that we will re­al­ly be­gin to ap­pre­ci­ate our beau­ti­ful is­lands," said Borel.

The three-day sym­po­sium which at­tract­ed the likes of world bat­ting cham­pi­on Bri­an Lara, for­mer world Cup goal-keep­er and now ES­PN com­men­ta­tor Sha­ka His­lop, for­mer world box­ing cham­pi­on Ria Ram­nar­ine and gym­nast The­ma Williams togth­er with Sports Min­is­ter Dar­ry Smith end­ed on Wednes­day.