Kevin Sunich

Court­ney Mc Nish, a man­age­ment and labour law con­sul­tant, has been ap­point­ed pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Bas­ket­ball Fed­er­a­tion of T&T (NBFT&T) at the or­ga­ni­za­tion's an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing held at the Petrotrin Beach Re­sort, Pa­lo Seco on Sat­ur­day. Mc Nish, a for­mer play­er, has re­placed the man he lost to in the 2009 NBFT&T elec­tions, Bri­an Man­ning, who re­signed from the post last month, with just un­der a year left in his two-year term. The Roy­al Ex­tra Li­ons own­er/man­ag­er said the con­sti­tu­tion was al­so amend­ed.

"The con­sti­tu­tion was amend­ed to in­clude a dis­ci­pli­nary com­mit­tee and in­clud­ed the pres­i­dents of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Bas­ket­ball Of­fi­cials of T&T (ABOTT), the Bas­ket­ball Coach­es As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (BCATT) and the Para­plegic As­so­ci­a­tion as mem­bers of the board of di­rec­tors.

"The term in of­fice for elect­ed of­fi­cers will move from two to four years start­ing next year, as well as a sys­tem of ro­ta­tion of elec­tions of of­fi­cers. This will see all sev­en of the elect­ed Fed­er­a­tion of­fi­cers in­clud­ing the pres­i­dent, serv­ing four-year terms."

In ad­di­tion he shared that if the Fed­er­a­tion gets a chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, he will not be a board mem­ber, how­ev­er he would still be able to at­tend meet­ings on in­vi­ta­tions from the pres­i­dent. Mc Nish said, "First I want to es­tab­lish an of­fice for the Fed­er­a­tion and have the staff it. Sec­ond­ly, my aim is to re­build re­la­tion­ships which went sour with the Sport Min­istry and the Sports Com­pa­ny, zones and af­fil­i­ates.

"Third­ly, I will be re­view­ing the op­er­a­tions of the nine zones. A num­ber of these zones are not op­er­at­ing at the lev­el they should, and fi­nal­ly to do a com­pre­hen­sive re­view of the na­tion­al teams and to re­con­struct the en­tire na­tion­al pro­gramme."

The new pres­i­dent al­so in­di­cat­ed that one of the main is­sues at present is to find out what is the fi­nan­cial sta­tus of the Fed­er­a­tion. He said there was al­so a vote of no con­fi­dence cast against vice-pres­i­dent Fi­nance Con­rad Pierre, and his po­si­tion will be up for dis­cus­sion at a spe­cial meet­ing on Sep­tem­ber 11, which will be fol­lowed by the board of di­rec­tors meet­ing.