Asha De Fre­itas-Mose­ley

The prepa­ra­tion part of a team for a big tour­na­ment is very in­volved, es­pe­cial­ly if the goal is to­wards a World Cup or Olympic event. The Olympic Com­mit­tee's goal of 10 gold medals in 2024 that its pres­i­dent Bri­an Lewis has set for this coun­try is a huge one.

He has re­cruit­ed the help of Cleopa­tra Borel as an am­bas­sador for the cause and is lit­tle by lit­tle at­tempt­ing to put things in place to fa­cil­i­tate the prepa­ra­tion pe­ri­od lead­ing up to the 2024 Olympic Games. I re­cent­ly heard it said by Lewis while at­tend­ing a "cour­tesy call" for the men's rug­by team fol­low­ing their NACRA Cham­pi­onship game, that the process in­volved with achiev­ing suc­cess is where em­pha­sis must be in any un­der­tak­ing. I am not so sure if all the pow­ers that be are al­ways as acute­ly aware of this fact as Lewis ap­pears to be.

In the lo­cal en­vi­ron­ment, na­tion­al sport is heav­i­ly de­pen­dent on vol­un­teer work and that makes it an ex­treme­ly volatile en­vi­ron­ment. In our day-to-day lives, many peo­ple rather pay a pro­fes­sion­al to han­dle a project than ask a friend or fam­i­ly mem­ber to do it be­cause al­though on the one hand you might be able to save on cost, on the oth­er hand you may end up pay­ing for it in time and/or qual­i­ty or at­ten­tion to de­tail.

In the end it stands to rea­son that it is worth the cost to pay a pro­fes­sion­al. So, while even the USOC re­lies heav­i­ly on vol­un­teer work, there is a point where it is not enough.

Last year when I vis­it­ed the US Olympic Train­ing Cen­tre in Col­orado Springs, the first thing I saw when I be­gan the tour of their grounds, was a huge wall recog­nis­ing their spon­sors. A Google search for "USOC cor­po­rate part­ners" will bring a clear­er ap­pre­ci­a­tion for spon­sor­ship in­volve­ment re­quired. The site has two cat­e­gories of cor­po­rate spon­sors: World­wide and Do­mes­tic Spon­sors to­talling 37 large to huge cor­po­rate en­ti­ties. Their Na­tion­al Med­ical Net­work in­cludes eight fa­cil­i­ties, and their li­censee list is 27 in num­ber.

Gain­ing the com­mit­ment of these en­ti­ties is a se­ri­ous busi­ness, not a char­i­ty. When a team makes a com­mit­ment to pur­sue a World Cup or Olympic qual­i­fi­ca­tion, they are agree­ing to a se­ri­ous, long term re­la­tion­ship that will in­volve the ap­pro­pri­ate lev­els of trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the sports in­dus­try in T&T has no rep­u­ta­tion of pos­sess­ing ei­ther of these traits on a na­tion­al lev­el and as such NSOs are faced with an even larg­er chal­lenge of prov­ing their worth when woo­ing po­ten­tial spon­sors.

The TTOC has af­ford­ed the pub­lic an op­por­tu­ni­ty to par­tic­i­pate in the #10gold24 task by cre­at­ing a bank ac­count to which ran­dom de­posits can be made. It is im­por­tant that the pub­lic clear­ly un­der­stand that the Olympic Com­mit­tee, just like in the US, is not based on fed­er­al sup­port. These Com­mit­tees ex­ist based on pri­vate fund­ing and vol­un­teer work. The USOC op­er­ates by a sta­ble, well bal­anced struc­ture com­bin­ing the two and that is why it is sus­tain­able and suc­cess­ful.

Com­ing back to the lo­cal en­vi­ron­ment, de­spite the neg­a­tive stig­ma the sports in­dus­try has earned for be­ing cor­rupt, it is not im­pos­si­ble to source the pri­vate fund­ing. It is im­por­tant how­ev­er that NSOs ap­pre­ci­ate and ac­cept that now more than ever, it is es­sen­tial that they prove their com­mit­ment to a pro­fes­sion­al lev­el of trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty.

This will in­volve putting pen to pa­per and sign­ing on a dot­ted line. The NSOs there­fore have to hon­est­ly ask them­selves whether they are up to the task of ac­com­plish­ing dreams of this mag­ni­tude or at least give it an hon­est and earnest crack at it � no ex­cus­es. This con­scious de­ci­sion will be a game-chang­er.

We have knocked at the door of op­por­tu­ni­ty many times in sport but be­cause of poor plan­ning and prepa­ra­tion we have not been able to com­plete­ly fol­low through. Luck has been de­scribed as that point when op­por­tu­ni­ty and prepa­ra­tion meet. While you can­not and will not al­ways an­tic­i­pate the op­por­tu­ni­ties, prepa­ra­tion is some­thing that can be de­lib­er­ate­ly or­ches­trat­ed with the right team of knowl­edge­able peo­ple of up­stand­ing char­ac­ter.

Get that sol­id team to­geth­er and a firm ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the val­ue of sport prepa­ra­tion and when the op­por­tu­ni­ty is pre­sent­ed, La­dy Luck will make an ap­pear­ance.

�2 Asha De Fre­itas-Mose­ley M.S. A.T.C., has been an ath­let­ic train­er/ther­a­pist with the Na­tion­al Ath­let­ic Train­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (NA­TA) for the past 12 years. She spe­cial­izes in the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of in­juries ex­pe­ri­enced in the lives of ac­tive and/or ath­let­ic pop­u­la­tions ap­ply­ing Ac­tive Re­lease Tech­nique (ART), Fa­cial Stretch Ther­a­py (FST) and Con­tem­po­rary Dry Needling to com­ple­ment her train­ing as a cer­ti­fied Cor­rec­tive Ex­er­cise Spe­cial­ist.

If you would like a con­sul­ta­tion or have an in­jury, she can be reached at Pulse Per­for­mance Ltd., lo­cat­ed at #54 Gal­lus St, Wood­brook.

Tel: 221-2437.