Rachael Thom­spon-King

Ephraim Ser­rette, who has steered the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ics Ad­min­is­traions (NAAA) through the past eight years, said yes­ter­day that he will be seek­ing a third term as pres­i­dent at the sport's an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing (AGM) and elec­tions of of­fi­cers sched­uled for Sat­ur­day.

This will be at the Radis­son Ho­tel, Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain, from 2 pm.

Stand­ing in his way though is cur­rent NAAA's fourth vice pres­i­dent Paul Voisin, who will chal­lenge him for the top post.

Ser­rette said over the last few years, un­der his stew­ard­ship the ad­min­is­tra­tion has con­sid­er­ably im­proved the im­age and per­for­mance of the as­so­ci­a­tion, first­ly by be­com­ing in­cor­po­rat­ed as a non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion as well as un­der­tak­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form.

"At present, our as­so­ci­a­tion has adopt­ed an amend­ed con­sti­tu­tion which will pro­vide us with the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­struc­ture our op­er­a­tions. The re­cent­ly adopt­ed con­sti­tu­tion now af­fords for the es­tab­lish­ment of a board which will con­sist of 11 mem­bers in­stead of 17," said Ser­rette, who has been a mem­ber of the NAAA's ex­ec­u­tive for the past 12 years. "With an ex­ec­u­tive of 17, at no time you will al­ways have agree­ment."

In 2005, he was ap­point­ed third vice pres­i­dent and two years lat­er, was elect­ed to the post of pres­i­dent. The mem­bers of his slate is not un­fa­mil­iar to the re­spon­si­b­li­ties of the as­so­ci­a­tion as they have been in­volved in run­ning the sport over the past few years and com­pet­ing in ath­let­ics for even longer.

Con­test­ing the first vice pres­i­dent po­si­tion is George Comis­siong, who has been a mem­ber of the ex­ec­u­tive for 18 years. He has served as chair­man of the Games Com­mit­tee for three years and has been chair­man of the Eco­nom­ic Plan­ning and Fund Rais­ing com­mit­tee for the past 15 years.

Al­lan Ba­boolal, who is the cur­rent gen­er­al sec­re­tary and has been a mem­ber of the NAAA for the past 35 years, is seek­ing the post of sec­ond vice pres­i­dent.

An­oth­er fa­mil­iar face is sol­dier Dex­ter Voisin, broth­er of Ser­rette's chal­lenger Paul. He is a War­rant Of­fi­cer Class 1 and holds the po­si­tion of Reg­i­men­tal Sergeant Ma­jor at the De­fence Force Head­quar­ters. He is a well-known for­mer mid­dle and long dis­tance ath­lete dur­ing the pe­ri­od 1981-1997, and was a Carif­ta 5,000m bronze medal­ist in 1988. He is cur­rent­ly the head coach of the De­fence Force Ath­let­ics team and is the hold­er of an IAAF Lev­el 5 Acad­e­my Chief Coach Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

Seek­ing to fill the po­si­tions of di­rec­tors are Dawn Wash­ing­ton, Durly Lu­cas, Ian Carter, Robin Br­ere­ton and Lu­cre­tia Burns.

Wash­ing­ton is is a for­mer ath­lete who rep­re­sent­ed T&T on the re­gion­al stage. Lu­cas is the founder and pres­i­dent of To­ba­go Fal­cons Ath­let­ics, a past pres­i­dent of the To­ba­go Ath­let­ics Com­mit­tee and has been a mem­ber of the NAAA ex­ec­u­tive since 2004 serv­ing in the po­si­tions of third and fourth vice pres­i­dent and com­mit­tee mem­ber.

Carter has served T&T as a coach, train­er and an ad­min­is­tra­tor in both track and field and hock­ey. He has been a track and field coach since 1993 and is an IAAF Lev­el 5 Sprints and Hur­dles Coach. He is al­so a cer­ti­fied IAAF Lec­tur­er and has lec­tured on IAAF Lev­els one, two and three cours­es lo­cal­ly and re­gion­al­ly while Br­ere­ton has been an ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber of the NAAA since 2000 and Burns has some 30 years ex­pe­ri­ence in track and field.

Ser­rette feels that this group of in­di­vid­u­als will con­tin­ue to func­tion well in achiev­ing the vi­sion, which is "'Striv­ing for Ex­cel­lence' is not just a name, but rather, it speaks to a team of pro­fes­sion­als who are for­ward look­ing and proac­tive and who pos­sess a clear vi­sion for the sport of track and field in T&T."

Through this out­look the Ser­rette slate hopes to fos­ter and sup­port out­stand­ing ath­letes and en­cour­age in­creased par­tic­i­pa­tion in ath­let­ics.

Ser­rette said," We hope to in­crease spon­sor­ship for the sport of track and field and pro­vide tech­ni­cal and ad­min­is­tra­tive lead­er­ship and di­rec­tion to all el­e­ments of the sport. To es­tab­lish a ra­tio­nal sys­tem of ath­lete de­vel­op­ment that en­sures the con­di­tions nec­es­sary to pro­duce, on an on­go­ing ba­sis, ath­letes of the abil­i­ty re­quired for teams in re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tions and man­age pro­grammes and fa­cil­i­ties that will en­sure the at­tain­ment of all these ob­jec­tives."

On Sat­ur­day, Ser­rette's team will try to win more votes than Voisin's, which in­clude mas­sage ther­a­pist and per­son­al train­er Brent El­der, who will be con­test­ing the first vice pres­i­dent post, Kelvin Sor­ril­lo for sec­ond vice pres­i­dent po­si­tion and for the trea­sur­er post, Aaisha Mar­tin. The bat­tle for the Di­rec­tors po­si­tions will be ver­sus Jin­skin Clarke, Sher­win Joseph, Ron­nell Bar­clay and Shayne Coop­er.

Ephraim Ser­rette's Slate

Pres­i­dent:Ephraim Ser­rette

First vice pres­i­dent:George Comis­siong

Sec­ond vice pres­i­dent:Al­lan Ba­boolal

Sec­re­tary:Dex­ter Voisin

As­sis­tant sec­re­tary:An­dre Le­ung Woo Gabriel

Trea­sur­er:Car­lene Haynes

Di­rec­tors:

Dawn Wash­ing­ton

Ian Carter

Robin Br­ere­ton

Durly Lu­cas

Lu­cret­i­ca Burns