KRISTY RAM­NAR­INE

kristy.ram­nar­ine@cnc.co.tt

The roar of the crowd, the thrill of the match—whether crick­et or foot­ball—once kept spec­ta­tors glued to the ac­tion. But to­day, the at­mos­phere has shift­ed. Fans are no longer just there for the game; they crave an ex­pe­ri­ence.

Women sports writ­ers Rachael Thomp­son-King and Naasira Mo­hammed have ob­served this trans­for­ma­tion first hand.

“Peo­ple paid more at­ten­tion to the game that was in front of them back then,” said Thomp­son-King. “The fo­cus was more on the field or the court. Now, peo­ple want to hear the lat­est tunes and par­ty.”

Mo­hammed, a for­mer me­dia man­ag­er at Crick­et West In­dies for both the male and fe­male teams, agreed that the pri­or­i­ties of Caribbean fans have evolved.

“Some­times you can ask peo­ple at a crick­et game what the score is and they don’t know what’s hap­pen­ing,” she said.

“Us in the Caribbean, every­one has their own form of cul­ture and mu­sic that they will play. While it will be the clean ver­sion, every­body al­ready knows what the ex­plic­it or un­cut ver­sion may be, and they sing along.”

Thomp­son-King and Mo­hammed are in sup­port of the Re­spect Her Game cam­paign which chal­lenges DJs to cre­ate a dif­fer­ent playlist for sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties in the coun­try.

The chal­lenge is be­ing thrown down to DJs by Dr Gabrielle Ho­sein, se­nior lec­tur­er at the In­sti­tute for De­vel­op­ment and Gen­der Stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies.

Dr Ho­sein is call­ing on them to re­think the mu­sic se­lec­tion for sports events, es­pe­cial­ly those in­volv­ing chil­dren and youth ath­letes.

She has a point­ed ques­tion for all in­volved in shap­ing the fu­ture of youth sports: “Where are the spaces for chil­dren’s de­vel­op­ment and youth de­vel­op­ment that are safe from the con­stant sex­u­al­is­ing of women and girls that takes place every­where in our so­ci­ety?”

Her con­cern isn’t just about mu­sic for mu­sic’s sake. She said, “We have to ask our­selves, is this mu­sic healthy for them? They are not go­ing to hear mu­sic at the Olympics. As a com­mu­ni­ty, from the top, from the min­istry to cor­po­rate en­ti­ties, to coach­es, to sport­ing as­so­ci­a­tions and par­ents, we need to ask our­selves: Are we giv­ing the chil­dren the best chances on and off the field?”

For Mo­hammed, work­ing with Crick­et West In­dies was a dream come true.

“I played crick­et at UWI for the women’s team,” she said.

“Work­ing for Crick­et West In­dies is the pin­na­cle of where you can work if you love crick­et. As a re­sult of the job, I trav­elled the world twice or more. Some of my great­est mem­o­ries were the ex­pe­ri­ences in for­eign coun­tries and how women and men in sport were treat­ed.

“Be­ing a woman in sport did have its chal­lenges in coun­tries like In­dia. A lot of peo­ple thought I was from In­dia, so a lot of the time I got side­lined,” she said.

“The team man­ag­er stepped in and said, ‘She is part of our team, she is West In­di­an’. Then you saw the at­ti­tude of peo­ple change when they re­alised I was a woman work­ing with a men’s team.”

Mo­hammed said it was a con­trast­ing ex­pe­ri­ence for her in coun­tries like New Zealand and Aus­tralia, where women’s sport­ing events are on the rise.

“You hear more fe­male-cen­tric songs like Katy Per­ry ‘Fire­work’ and oth­er pop­u­lar fe­male an­thems,” she said. “It’s not the types of lyrics you hear in the Caribbean—not that I am knock­ing so­ca be­cause it is part of our cul­ture—but some­times we need to take a step back and lis­ten to the lyrics be­cause they can be heard by the younger ones.”

A sports jour­nal­ist for the past 23 years, Thomp­son-King played col­lege bas­ket­ball and rep­re­sent­ed T&T at both the ju­nior and se­nior lev­els.

“When I was play­ing sport, I used mu­sic a lot of the time to prep my­self. Mu­sic is part of sport,” she said. “Peo­ple will be sur­prised, but the songs we lis­ten to might be slow songs. I just saw an in­ter­view where Dwyane Wade said he loved to lis­ten to Ed Sheer­an be­fore he goes on the court to play, and you would think he would be more in­to rap or hip hop—I’m not try­ing to stereo­type him. A lot of times, I would lis­ten to Mari­ah Carey and not so­ca, just to give me that mo­ti­va­tion.”

Thomp­son-King said the Re­spect Her Game cam­paign presents an op­por­tu­ni­ty for DJs to be cre­ative with their art.

“There are a lot of gen­res of mu­sic out there,” she said. “Al­so, there are many good so­ca tunes which can be used to mo­ti­vate play­ers and avoid the provoca­tive sports. Most sport­ing events are at­tend­ed by fam­i­lies who have chil­dren.”

Thomp­son-King, who is the pres­i­dent of Hori­zons Sports Club, con­tin­ues to men­tor young women and girls in the fields of bas­ket­ball and net­ball.

“Mu­sic has al­ways been part of sports,” she said.

“Dur­ing half-time, a lot of mu­sic is played in bas­ket­ball. What we al­so have is play­ers cre­at­ing their own de­fence chants.”

Both women be­lieve the cam­paign is a step in the right di­rec­tion to hav­ing ap­pro­pri­ate mu­sic at fe­male sport­ing events.