KRISTY RAM­NAR­INE

Kristy.ram­nar­ine@cnc3.co.tt

Through­out her life, Di­ane Hen­der­son has al­ways been first to do some­thing un­usu­al. There­fore, it was no sur­prise when the ex­pe­ri­enced sports ad­min­is­tra­tor was elect­ed the first fe­male Pres­i­dent of the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC).

Hen­der­son, who was on the ex­ec­u­tive board of the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ics Ad­min­is­tra­tions (NAAA), be­came the eleventh Pres­i­dent of the TTOC at a his­toric first vir­tu­al elec­tion held on April 30, 2022. She won by a mar­gin of 24 votes to 10 over the oth­er can­di­date, Rowe­na Williams, with 70 per cent of the vote.

“I was asked by past pres­i­dent Lar­ry Ro­many to join and I got nom­i­nat­ed by the Triathalon Fed­er­a­tion which I was still as­so­ci­at­ed with and was elect­ed,” she re­called.

“All my life I was the first in do­ing things, whether it is 100 miles or an ad­ven­ture race I have al­ways been do­ing things out­side the box.

“Fun­ny enough I thought about this (be­com­ing the TTOC Pres­i­dent) about 20 years ear­li­er, then I for­got about it and it just came up.

“Be­ing the first woman it does not re­al­ly phase me at all. I don’t think that I paid too much at­ten­tion to it like peo­ple paid at­ten­tion to it. It was then I had to recog­nise then that I am the first fe­male pres­i­dent.”

Hen­der­son has con­tributed sig­nif­i­cant­ly to sports gov­er­nance, ath­lete wel­fare, strate­gic plan­ning and sports me­di­a­tion. As TTOC Pres­i­dent she is tasked with up­hold­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion of the Com­mit­tee.

“I en­sure we fol­low the guide­lines in line with the In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee’s rules,” she said.

“The main thing is en­sur­ing that we car­ry on the busi­ness and en­sure that we achieve what ob­jec­tives we want to achieve for the ath­letes and the sport in gen­er­al.”

Hen­der­son leads an ex­ec­u­tive of main­ly women.

“It so hap­pens that all of our staff are fe­male we do have one or two in­cor­po­rat­ed in terms of vol­un­teers, for spe­cif­ic projects,” she said.

“The ex­ec­u­tive was a 7:6 in the last elec­tion, sev­en be­ing women. We are the first Olympic Com­mit­tee to have a ma­jor­i­ty of women in the whole Caribbean and pos­si­bly the Amer­i­c­as.”

Nat­u­ral­ly, Hen­der­son and her team are very proud to em­pow­er women and show­case the strengths of the women who are in­volved.

“We’ve done sev­er­al ed­u­ca­tion pro­grammes, which we con­tin­ue to do and quite a big per­cent­age is al­ways women,” she said.

“We’ve had our Women In Sport an­nu­al ed­u­ca­tion sem­i­nars, dur­ing COVID we did it as we­bi­na­rs but that’s been go­ing on eight or nine years. Every March we cel­e­brate In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day.

“Every time we have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to put for­ward ed­u­ca­tion pro­grammes in line with the IOC we try to some­times they say it should be a fe­male be­cause they are al­so try­ing to ad­vance the po­si­tion of fe­males in the sport­ing fra­ter­ni­ty.”

Hen­der­son has four decades of proven lead­er­ship at both Colfire and An­gos­tu­ra, where she left a lega­cy of health and well­ness.

“When I fin­ished high school and I was told by my dad to go get a job, I did that and af­ter that, I be­came quite in­de­pen­dent. I was still in the house­hold but I was quite in­de­pen­dent I won’t ask for any­thing. Hence the rea­son I put my­self through all my ed­u­ca­tion af­ter that. Hav­ing done the sec­re­tar­i­al my first job was at Colfire and I loved it.”

Hen­der­son’s fa­ther took an ac­tive role in her life and en­cour­aged her to par­tic­i­pate in sports and dance. She said while he was not phys­i­cal­ly present the sup­port was al­ways there.

“Par­ents, be­cause of the con­ver­sa­tion un­der­stand that sup­port is im­por­tant es­pe­cial­ly now,” she said.

“Some­times you can al­so clob­ber a child and you need to take a step back as a par­ent. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, there are a few chil­dren you can see that the par­ents are a lit­tle bit over­shad­ow­ing the child’s de­vel­op­ment of be­ing them­selves. We are los­ing our ath­letes be­cause of pres­sure.”

She be­lieves more aware­ness of the bal­ance of acad­e­mia and sport is need­ed.

“Don’t put in the child’s mind they are the best thing like sweet­bread be­fore they reach and un­der­stand what that is. We are quick to put the as­pi­ra­tion on the child be­fore we ac­tu­al­ly reach the full po­ten­tial.

And when they do (child) ex­pe­ri­ence that is neg­a­tive or im­pact­ful to them we don’t know if they have that mo­ti­va­tion to con­tin­ue so they can take the op­po­site to that and pull out.”

The TTOC Pres­i­dent has three main goals, one of which is the pro­mo­tion of a healthy lifestyle.

“I think every sin­gle per­son should un­der­stand that your body is God-giv­en and you should take care of that as a pri­ma­ry thing in your life.

“The en­vi­ron­ment is al­so a pas­sion of mine and from the IOC it is one of the agen­da items and we have signed off Sport for Cli­mate Ac­tion Frame­work and we are now push­ing the en­vi­ron­ment through sport­ing en­ti­ties.

“We would like to get our lega­cy our Olympic House sort­ed, hope­ful­ly, I can get that go­ing even if it is to start the ball rolling,” she said.

Hen­der­son al­so serves as Pres­i­dent of the T&T Com­mon­wealth Games As­so­ci­a­tion (TTC­GA) and the T&T Sand and Beach Games As­so­ci­a­tion (TTS­B­GA).