In the af­ter­math of Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai's bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, many in­di­vid­u­als in the sport­ing fra­ter­ni­ty be­lieve that much more could have been done for the fu­ture of sports in T&T.

In the brief state­ment on na­tion­al sports in Mon­day's 2013/14 bud­get, Howai spoke about the rapid de­vel­op­ment of the Na­tion­al Aquat­ic Cen­tre, the Na­tion­al Ten­nis Cen­tre and the Na­tion­al Cy­cle Cen­tre. Al­though sat­is­fied with those goals, the gen­er­al con­sen­sus is that not enough is be­ing done for the next gen­er­a­tion of sport­ing he­roes.

For­mer So­ca War­rior and cur­rent man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Cen­tral FC, Brent San­cho, was a bit dis­ap­point­ed.

"Look­ing at the so­cial is­sues we have in this coun­try, I would have liked to see more giv­en to the grass­root pro­grammes," said San­cho.

He be­lieves more im­me­di­ate fund­ing needs to be al­lo­cat­ed to the ground lev­el first, to pro­duce world class ath­letes.

"We must start from the de­vel­op­men­tal lev­el, or else we will have no­body to fill these fa­cil­i­ties."

Like San­cho, new­ly ap­point­ed pres­i­dent of the T&T Ten­nis As­so­ci­a­tion, Kendall Cuffy, be­lieves in de­vel­op­men­tal pro­grammes.

Al­though he ap­pre­ci­ates the gov­ern­ment's ini­tia­tive in the Na­tion­al Ten­nis Cen­tre, he says not enough is be­ing done to nur­ture fu­ture stars.

"We need to start at the grass­root lev­el; this is where world class tal­ent will be dis­cov­ered," said Cuffy, who has plans to meet with the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T (Sportt) to dis­cuss con­cerns in lo­cal ten­nis, and will pro­pose his de­vel­op­men­tal ideas.

Bri­an Lewis, pres­i­dent of the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC), is of the opin­ion that T&T must start tak­ing sports more se­ri­ous­ly.

"We need to build sus­tain­abil­i­ty to fur­ther as­sist the sport econ­o­my," Lewis said. "I am a be­liev­er that sport needs to get away from the de­pen­den­cy syn­drome."

He gave the ex­am­ple that more can be done to de­vel­op sport en­tre­pre­neur­ship.

Njisane Phillip's step­fa­ther and man­ag­er, Phillip White­man, is con­tent­ed with the progress be­ing made with the Na­tion­al Cy­cle Cen­tre.

"I am hap­py with the de­vel­op­ment be­ing made," he said. He al­so said the Min­istry of Sport has been co-op­er­at­ing with the cy­cling body.

"The cy­cling fed­er­a­tion has giv­en ad­vice on stuff that can be done to im­prove the fa­cil­i­ty (cy­cle cen­tre) and they have lis­tened."

White­man al­so be­lieves the cen­tre will de­vel­op a new crop of cy­clists in T&T.

"I know this (cen­tre) will bring tal­ent, but it needs to be prop­er­ly main­tained."

White­man men­tioned this cen­tre should help eco­nom­ic growth in T&T as many cy­clists from abroad will con­tin­ue com­ing to T&T to com­pete.

"A lot of peo­ple are ex­cit­ed to come to T&T and when peo­ple come to T&T we will earn rev­enue."

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