Asha De Fre­itas-Mose­ley

Some of you may have re­alised that I am cur­rent­ly work­ing with our CPLT20 T&T Red Steel team as the team ther­a­pist. My role with the team is to man­age any in­juries that may arise. How­ev­er, as is ex­pect­ed with any new ex­pe­ri­ence, be­ing part of a team like this has lent it­self to my de­vel­op­ment in unique ways be­yond that of a ther­a­pist, by sim­ply look­ing and learn­ing.

As every­one is well aware, Red Steel start­ed off on a los­ing streak for three con­sec­u­tive games, los­ing to Guyana then Bar­ba­dos and Ja­maica be­fore things changed and we earned our­selves three straight vic­to­ries. Ja­maica is the one team that has stung us twice to loss­es in this tour­na­ment, first in our own yard and then in theirs. With loss­es usu­al­ly ac­com­pa­ny neg­a­tive sen­ti­ments much of which has been ex­pressed to­wards the CPL for­mat which does not struc­ture the teams based on coun­tries, but as fran­chis­es. All the ath­letes with­in the re­gion have been se­lect­ed by the dif­fer­ent icon ath­letes to rep­re­sent their par­tic­u­lar fran­chise re­gard­less of their coun­try of ori­gin. In­ter­na­tion­al play­ers from out­side of the Caribbean have al­so been brought in cre­at­ing a very dy­nam­ic en­vi­ron­ment, very dif­fer­ent to any­thing else that has been done with­in the re­gion be­fore.

On most oth­er teams that I have worked with both lo­cal­ly and in the States, the ath­letes are fa­mil­iar with their team mates long be­fore a tour­na­ment starts. In this sce­nario the crick­eters were not al­ready fa­mil­iar with their team­mates much be­fore the tour­na­ment be­gan. As such, learn­ing the dif­fer­ent per­son­al­i­ties and un­der­stand­ing each oth­er's strengths and quirks was very im­por­tant to jelling the team so that per­for­mance on the field would al­so be good. For one month these ath­letes learn to be team­mates and play on a field to­geth­er where­as in most cas­es pri­or they may have been ri­vals.

Putting aside the true "T&T Red Force" team will take some time. Many of our strong lo­cal crick­eters are play­ing for oth­er teams in this tour­na­ment. While I com­plete­ly un­der­stand the neg­a­tive sen­ti­ment sur­round­ing this (even some of the ath­letes play­ing against Red Steel have com­ment­ed about how strange it can feel) I see much to be gained with the way things are struc­tured in this CPL at the mo­ment.

* Good ex­po­sure of the younger tal­ent.

* Re­gion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties to ex­pe­ri­ence crick­et in a pro­fes­sion­al ca­pac­i­ty.

* In­ten­si­fy the com­pet­i­tive­ness be­tween play­ers with­in the re­gion.

* Bridg­ing re­la­tions be­tween the is­lands.

* An in­crease in the num­ber of op­por­tu­ni­ties for the sports med­i­cine pro­fes­sion­als in the re­gion.

Cur­rent­ly, the Red Steel team has ath­letes on it from St. Vin­cent, Bar­ba­dos, South Africa, Ire­land, New Zealand and Sri Lan­ka. The youngest ath­lete is 17 years of age (the youngest in the tour­na­ment) while the old­est is 32 years. On the tech­ni­cal team there are two fe­males which is more than on any oth­er CPL team at the mo­ment and atyp­i­cal for even a West In­dies tech­ni­cal team. So, in terms of di­ver­si­ty, a lot of it could be found on the Trinidad and To­ba­go Red Steel team. This sort of ex­po­sure can af­ford ath­letes, par­tic­u­lar­ly the younger ones, lessons in adapt­abil­i­ty and com­mu­ni­ca­tion when placed out­side of their com­fort zone, im­prov­ing them as pro­fes­sion­al ath­letes.

As a ther­a­pist, the chal­lenge work­ing with a team sport on a short term ba­sis like this, as al­so hap­pens with Pan Am Games or the Olympics, is the abil­i­ty to man­age in­jury ef­fi­cient­ly and ef­fec­tive­ly. Rea­son be­ing, there is lim­it­ed fa­mil­iar­i­ty with the ath­lete–his/her med­ical his­to­ry and how they re­spond to in­jury man­age­ment. It is a bit like try­ing to build a puz­zle with­out hav­ing the pic­ture to guide you, so you are forced out of your com­fort zone quite a bit.

In these sit­u­a­tions, start­ing with mak­ing sure that all medico-le­gal con­cerns are ad­dressed be­comes very im­por­tant. From there, en­sur­ing prop­er doc­u­men­ta­tion con­cern­ing any in­jury man­age­ment is put in place. Lit­tle by lit­tle, the pic­ture of the team starts to form and even­tu­al­ly you get your foot­ing with where the team sits med­ical­ly.

My ex­pe­ri­ence with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Red Steel team has been a very re­ward­ing one. I have en­joyed the chal­lenge of step­ping away from my clin­i­cal prac­tice for four weeks and for be­ing part of a tech­ni­cal team, the sole pur­pose of which is to bring out the best from the team.

I hope that op­por­tu­ni­ties like this will con­tin­ue to in­crease in the re­gion.

Asha De Fre­itas-Mose­ley is a cer­ti­fied ath­let­ic train­er with the Na­tion­al Ath­let­ic Train­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion of the USA. She has over 10 years of ex­pe­ri­ence re­ha­bil­i­tat­ing ath­letes and mem­bers of the ac­tive pop­u­la­tion from in­jury to full play. She can be reached at Pulse Per­for­mance Ltd., lo­cat­ed at #17 Hen­ry Pierre St., St James. Tel: 221-2437.

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