Lo­cal ath­let­ics com­pe­ti­tion shifts to the Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um in Ba­co­let, To­ba­go this week­end when the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion Ath­let­ics Ad­min­is­tra­tion of T&T (NAAATT) hosts its Na­tion­al Ju­nior Cham­pi­onships.

The event is one of the three events (Ju­ve­nile, Ju­nior and Open) that make up the Cham­pi­onships Se­ries and is usu­al­ly held around the mid­dle of June. How­ev­er, ow­ing to the resched­ul­ing of CAPE and CSEC Ex­am­i­na­tions this year and in the best in­ter­est of the ath­letes sit­ting ex­ams, the event was post­poned to the week­end im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter school clos­es.

NAAATT al­so shift­ed the venue to Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um in an ef­fort to boost in­ter­est in the sport in the sis­ter isle and to al­low res­i­dents and pos­si­bly tourists to come out and see the young ath­letes in ac­tion. It is not of­ten that they would get to do so as most of the ma­jor meets are held in Trinidad.

To­ba­go has pro­duced sev­er­al top ath­letes over the years in­clud­ing Melvin Nero, Josanne Lu­cas, Ren­nie Quow, Se­moy Hack­ett and Kel­ly-Ann Bap­tiste. There are a few ris­ing stars from To­ba­go that would have com­pet­ed quite suc­cess­ful­ly at the 2022 Carif­ta Games in Ja­maica. Among them are Lalinii Grant, Miguel Tay­lor and Alexxe Hen­ry. The Carif­ta team re­turned home with 23 medals (2 gold, 11 sil­ver and 10 bronze) and sev­er­al of them will be in ac­tion on the week­end.

Apart from be­com­ing a na­tion­al ju­nior cham­pi­on, ex­cel­lent per­for­mances at this lev­el as­sist with at­tract­ing schol­ar­ships for ter­tiary study in USA.

The two-day meet, a plat­form for na­tion­al ju­nior ath­letes to at­tract schol­ar­ships for ter­tiary study in USA, will al­so pro­vide a fi­nal op­por­tu­ni­ty for ath­letes still seek­ing to at­tain the qual­i­fy­ing stan­dard for the up­com­ing World Ath­let­ics Un­der-20 Cham­pi­onships card­ed for Au­gust 2-7 in Cali, Colom­bia.