Fay­ola KJ Fras­er

Em­body­ing the live­ly and ex­cit­ing na­ture of the sport­ing world in his per­son, Gyasi Mer­rique en­er­get­i­cal­ly presents the ex­cit­ing de­vel­op­ments in sport for the CNC3 7 pm news­cast. An ex­pert and a lover of all things sport, Gyasi has been cov­er­ing sport news in some ca­pac­i­ty for over 15 years.

Al­though Mer­rique moved around var­i­ous parts of T&T as a child, he con­sid­ers him­self, at the core, a true coun­try boy at heart, his fam­i­ly hail­ing from San­gre Grande, Man­zanil­la, and Guayagua­yare. Dur­ing his child­hood, his par­ents re­mem­ber him be­ing drawn to sport from ear­ly. At two years old, when he would go walk­ing with his moth­er or fa­ther, he would try to pull away from them and run off to kick, throw, or catch the ball, in­ter­ven­ing in the games of old­er chil­dren. From boy­hood in­to young ado­les­cence, he played crick­et and foot­ball and ran track and field. As a Queens’ Roy­al Col­lege alum, his time at the school was filled with dai­ly sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties. How­ev­er, play­ing sports wasn’t the on­ly thing on his mind at that time. His teach­ers re­call even to­day that he used to de­liv­er run­ning com­men­tary on sport ac­tiv­i­ties dur­ing Phys­i­cal Ed­u­ca­tion class, re­gal­ing class­mates with his take on the events.

At the end of his sec­ondary school ca­reer, Mer­rique “quick­ly re­alised that it was ob­vi­ous I may not have been good enough to play sport at the high­est lev­els”, and act­ing up­on ad­vice from the then prin­ci­pal of QRC, he be­gan to seek out op­por­tu­ni­ties in the me­dia, through the QRC “Old Boys” As­so­ci­a­tion. An on-the-job train­ing op­por­tu­ni­ty pre­sent­ed it­self, and he was hired to work at the Gayelle sta­tion in op­er­a­tions, learn­ing to man­age cam­era op­er­a­tions, sound, edit­ing, and set de­sign. This pe­ri­od was piv­otal in his for­ay in­to the me­dia, pro­vid­ed use­ful foun­da­tion­al tools for Mer­rique, and he grew to love it. Even now, many years lat­er, he still has the range un­der his belt, and can “grab a cam­era if there’s no cam­era­man avail­able” and in­de­pen­dent­ly cov­er sto­ries if need­ed. Af­ter a few months in op­er­a­tions, he was rec­om­mend­ed to the Head of Sport at the sta­tion, who took him un­der his wing to learn to write sport.

Mer­rique’s ca­reer as a sport re­porter blos­somed, and af­ter two years in the sport de­part­ment at Gayelle he moved on­to CNC3 as a sports re­porter in 2009. It is easy for Mer­rique to re­mem­ber his most icon­ic sto­ry dur­ing his ca­reer at CNC3, which was his in­ter­view with crick­et leg­end Bri­an Lara. On that mem­o­rable day, Lara had con­vened a T20 leg­ends crick­et match, and Mer­rique went to cov­er the match on his own, with­out a cam­era op­er­a­tor, util­is­ing his skill learned at Gayelle. Al­though he ini­tial­ly kept his dis­tance, not want­i­ng to dis­turb Lara, when Lara beck­oned him to come over, he went, armed with his cam­era and mi­cro­phone, and did the in­ter­view while Lara was prac­tis­ing his bat­ting. “It was the most nat­ur­al, gen­uine con­ver­sa­tion,” Mer­rique re­mem­bers, “he let me ask him any ques­tion I want­ed.” Mer­rique, how­ev­er, did not stray too far from the game at hand, ques­tion­ing Lara about his en­try in­to this new it­er­a­tion of crick­et–T20–the ex­pe­ri­ence and ad­just­ments he made.

It is not sur­pris­ing that Mer­rique’s favourite pas­times in­clude both play­ing and watch­ing sport. He con­sid­ers him­self a “true lover” of sport, mean­ing that none es­cape his fan­cy. Foot­ball is his favourite sport to play, as he has played it the longest, even try­ing out for a se­mi-pro­fes­sion­al team in his younger years. How­ev­er, his favourite sport to watch is vol­ley­ball. “It’s a re­al­ly en­gag­ing spec­ta­tor sport,” he says, “and there’s high-oc­tane ac­tion from start to fin­ish with­out many low points.”

At present, as a Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Jour­nal­ist and the CNC3 sport an­chor, he takes the task of keep­ing abreast of de­vel­op­ments in the sport world very se­ri­ous­ly. He con­sid­ers it cru­cial to have as much knowl­edge as he can of sport­ing events and mat­ters ahead of dis­sem­i­nat­ing that in­for­ma­tion to the pub­lic.

Mer­rique al­so en­gages in re­port­ing on cul­ture and events and en­joys at­tend­ing fetes, con­certs, and shows in that re­gard. His cul­tur­al roots run deep, as his grand­fa­ther was a well-known ca­lyp­son­ian, D Sur­pris­er, who was, at the time of his pass­ing, the old­est ca­lyp­son­ian in T&T. Mer­rique’s broth­er Ozy Mag­iq is one of this coun­try’s pi­o­neers of rap­so mu­sic.

Mer­rique hopes to en­cour­age young boys and men in T&T to strive for ex­cel­lence and seek and find op­por­tu­ni­ties. Many peo­ple along his path have made space for him and ex­tend­ed a help­ing hand, which has al­lowed him to achieve so many things he on­ly once dreamed about. He not on­ly en­joys his job, as he gets to dive deep in­to his beloved sport every day, but he al­so en­joys the plat­form it gives him to in­spire oth­er young men who may have had trou­ble find­ing their way, to know that there will al­ways be an op­por­tu­ni­ty to make it and achieve a suc­cess­ful and en­rich­ing ca­reer path.