Sports Min­is­ter Brent San­cho says he was un­aware that a con­cert book­ing ac­cept­ed by the fa­cil­i­ties man­age­ment unit at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um (HCS) in Wood­brook forced of­fi­cials of the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ics Ad­min­is­tra­tion (NAAA) to resched­ule its cal­en­dar of cham­pi­onship events orig­i­nal­ly sched­uled to start last week­end.

Re­demp­tion II was the name of the con­cert held at the pop­u­lar sport­ing fa­cil­i­ty which re­port­ed­ly scup­pered pre-planned ac­tiv­i­ties by the na­tion­al sport­ing body.

The NGC/NAAA Ju­nior Cham­pi­onships was ad­ver­tised to take place on May 30.

San­cho told the T&T Guardian he was un­aware of any such de­vel­op­ment and ex­pressed sur­prise, cit­ing that the NAAA ex­ec­u­tive didn't not con­tact him, at least, in an ef­fort to in­ter­vene.

The NAAA is­sued a me­dia re­lease on May 18, which stat­ed the HCS Grounds was no longer avail­able for its planned meet last Sat­ur­day.

A so­cial me­dia firestorm con­se­quent­ly erupt­ed with op­po­nents for and against the stag­ing of the con­cert. Many want­ed to know if the HCS was a ded­i­cat­ed sport­ing fa­cil­i­ty or a con­cert hall.

This, cit­ing that na­tion­al track and field meets were tak­ing place in prepa­ra­tion for in­ter­na­tion­al event such as the Pan Am Games, World Cham­pi­onships sched­uled to take place over the next two months.

Track and field events af­fect­ed ow­ing to the con­cert book­ing in­clud­ed the NGC/NAAA Ju­nior Cham­pi­onships; NGC/NAAA Ju­ve­nile Cham­pi­onships and the NGC/NAAA Com­bined Events Cham­pi­onships, to­geth­er with the Fal­cons In­vi­ta­tion­al. All were re­port­ed­ly pushed back by one week.

These events will take place this June along with the Sagi­cor/NGC Open Cham­pi­onships on the week­end of 26-28.

Con­tact­ed, Ephraim Ser­rette, pres­i­dent of the NAAA said this was not the first time the NAAA cal­en­dar of events was over­looked by the Sta­di­um man­age­ment for a non-sport re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ty.

"Last year, we used the foot­ball tun­nel as the call room and warm up cen­tre for the ath­letes. Track and field is an event that takes place in­side and out­side. Some­how, some­one of the Sta­di­um man­age­ment team does not recog­nise that. It's a lit­tle dif­fi­cult for the ath­letes be­cause of that. We ap­pre­ci­ate that we do not have to pay for use of the Sta­di­um and these events (con­certs) are the events that peo­ple pay for use of the Sta­di­um," he said.

Ser­rette added, "We plan very ear­ly. We al­ways do. We want to work with every­one, but they have to un­der­stand that track and field is in­side and out­side the Sta­di­um. We book it (the Sta­di­um) at the end of Sep­tem­ber ear­ly Oc­to­ber every year. Track and field doesn't win ad­min­is­tra­tion of the year by guess. Track and field didn't get $12 mil­lion from a spon­sor (NGC) for three years, by guess."