Sport is a way to ex­plore life's big is­sues.

Break­ing down bound­aries through sport. There is not a more pow­er­ful ve­hi­cle to pro­mote T&T over­seas and de­vel­op deep­er ties. There are un­prece­dent­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties for col­lab­o­ra­tion. Team T&T can be a mir­ror re­flec­tion of T&T's tra­di­tion of em­brac­ing di­ver­si­ty, equal­i­ty and in­clu­siv­i­ty.

The twin-is­land Re­pub­lic's di­ver­si­ty has been a key fea­ture of T&T cul­ture. T&T sport has demon­strat­ed great re­silience in as­sim­i­lat­ing di­ver­si­ty, which it­self has be­come a dis­tinc­tive char­ac­ter­is­tic of what T&T cul­ture is to­day.

Team T&T serves as a plat­form for in­ter­na­tion­al cul­tur­al ex­change. In this re­gard, T&T should make ef­forts to im­prove on the use of sport as a crit­i­cal suc­cess fac­tor in the de­vel­op­ment of a strate­gic ef­fort to po­si­tion brand T&T glob­al­ly.

Heed­ing crit­i­cism is not on­ly a virtue but al­so shrewd. The im­por­tance of mu­tu­al re­spect and trust can­not be tak­en for grant­ed.

There is an emo­tion­al at­tach­ment to the coun­try that peo­ple, the world over, dis­play via sup­port for their na­tion­al teams.

Cer­tain de­vel­op­ments in re­cent weeks beg the ques­tion, when will T&T sport get our act to­geth­er? What will dri­ve im­prove­ment in the ad­min­is­tra­tion and man­age­ment of sport? Are we not fed-up of be­ing swamped by con­flict?

The de­te­ri­o­ra­tion must be seen as an ob­sta­cle to T&T seiz­ing the his­tor­i­cal op­por­tu­ni­ties that sport pro­vides.

There is fric­tion and ten­sion as na­tion­al sport or­gan­i­sa­tions have had their fund­ing cut. They are strug­gling to fund the ba­sics. It is a sor­ry state of af­fairs as op­por­tu­ni­ties for the next gen­er­a­tion of sports­men and sports­women are be­ing cur­tailed. There is short-sight­ed de­ci­sion mak­ing tak­ing place with­in na­tion­al sport or­gan­i­sa­tions.

How can T&T sport nav­i­gate an un­pre­dictable fu­ture? First­ly, have a vi­sion. We need to be able to imag­ine our fu­ture com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent from what we know now. If we can­not, we must sur­round our­selves with peo­ple more imag­i­na­tive than we are. We can­not just adapt to change as it hap­pens. The world is chang­ing so fast that when we no­tice the change it is way too late.

If we do not have a vi­sion that stretch­es be­yond what we can see to­day, we can­not make strate­gic de­ci­sions. At best, we can make tac­ti­cal de­ci­sions. An­oth­er es­sen­tial skill set is we need to be able to in­ter­pret trends cor­rect­ly. This is the dilem­ma fac­ing every sports ad­min­is­tra­tor - how do we cre­ate the best so­lu­tions for T&T sport?

Sport is a gate­way to the T&T way of life. A small is­land na­tion with a large lega­cy. Suc­cess is at our fin­ger­tips. We can write our sto­ry.

As we are at the mid­point of the year it's im­por­tant to re­flect and do some deep think­ing on where we are at and what's still to come.

Ed­i­tor’s Note:

Bri­an Lewis is the pres­i­dent of the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) and T&T Com­mon­wealth Games As­so­ci­a­tion (TTC­GA) and the views ex­pressed are not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of the or­gan­i­sa­tions.