There are mo­ments in a coun­try’s life when a sin­gle fig­ure be­comes more than suc­cess­ful, more than fa­mous, more than dom­i­nant. They be­come a ref­er­ence point—a con­stant that helps de­fine who we are while the world around us keeps shift­ing. For Trinidad and To­ba­go, Machel Mon­tano is that fig­ure.

His­to­ry was made for T&T at the Win­ter Olympic Games in Italy on Sat­ur­day when alpine ski­er Nikhil Al­leyne took to the slopes.

​In the af­ter­math of failed World Cup qual­i­fi­ca­tion bids by the coun­try’s U-17 boys' and girls' teams, T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) pres­i­dent Kieron Ed­wards has sum­moned new tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor Devin El­cock to de­vel­op pro­grammes to en­sure that the flaws that are ev­i­dent with the coun­try’s youth teams are cor­rect­ed and progress made at in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tions.

ARKANSAS – Julien Al­fred con­tin­ued her im­pres­sive buildup to next month’s World In­door Cham­pi­onships with an­oth­er im­pres­sive per­for­mance, this time at the Tyson In­vi­ta­tion­al in the Unit­ed States on Fri­day.

In last week's ar­ti­cle ("The em­per­or has no clothes") I wrote of the TTFA's dis­as­trous use of our na­tion­al teams to cre­ate il­lu­sions. I quote my­self, "The As­so­ci­a­tion has con­sis­tent­ly bet all its mar­bles on an in­ter­na­tion­al break­through to daz­zle the pub­lic and mask the mul­ti­tude of sins of com­mis­sion and omis­sion on the do­mes­tic front." The re­cent and pre­dictable elim­i­na­tion of our U17 teams, male and fe­male, in World Cup qual­i­fy­ing has val­i­dat­ed my words. The men's loss to Bar­ba­dos and their nar­cot­ic win against min­nows St Mar­tin, how­ev­er, were un­fore­seen and un­for­giv­able. I am not in­ter­est­ed in the disin­gen­u­ous ex­cus­es of team coach­es, de­void of any sense of per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. Ul­ti­mate­ly, the col­lapse of our youth teams lies at the feet of the cur­rent TTFA ex­ec­u­tive.

ST GEORGE’S, Grena­da– Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) has un­veiled a pow­er­ful 15-play­er West In­dies Women’s squad to host Sri Lan­ka in a three-match One Day In­ter­na­tion­al se­ries, set to bowl off at the Na­tion­al Crick­et Sta­di­um from Feb­ru­ary 20.

Roy­hil Seals Wa­ter Po­lo Club will field three teams at the an­nu­al South Flori­da In­ter­na­tion­al Wa­ter Po­lo Tour­na­ment in Coral Springs, Flori­da, in the Unit­ed States over the week­end on Sat­ur­day and Sun­day.

With the Mer­ry Monarch ready to rule the streets of Trinidad and To­ba­go in three days, I could eas­i­ly ded­i­cate this en­tire col­umn to Trinidad and To­ba­go Car­ni­val. For in­stance, how did those sup­pos­ed­ly es­teemed ca­lyp­so judges come up first­ly with the 40 Kaisosians to take part in the se­mi-fi­nals at Skin­ner Park, on­ly to ghost the most sea­soned Kaisosians when the Di­manche Gras fi­nals roll around at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah on Sun­day night? It takes a rare tal­ent to look at a mas­ter­piece and say, "No thanks, I pre­fer the rough draft.”

Trinidad and To­ba­go Un­der-17 head coach Ran­dolph Boyce be­lieves the coun­try must over­haul and ex­tend its youth de­vel­op­ment struc­ture if it is to con­sis­tent­ly com­pete with the re­gion’s elite.

A dogged dis­play in both de­fence and at­tack but that efort still did not pre­vent T&T from slump­ing to a 2-1 loss to Mex­i­co in the fi­nal match in Group A of the Con­ca­caf Un­der-17 World Cup Qual­i­fiers at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo on Thurs­day night.

T&T’s Un­der-17 foot­ballers face a daunt­ing task to over­take their Cen­tral Amer­i­can coun­ter­parts, Mex­i­co, from 7 pm Thurs­day night if they are to have a chance of pro­gress­ing out of Group A as the win­ner in the Con­ca­caf Un­der-17 World Cup Qual­i­fiers at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo, Port-of-Spain.

MUM­BAI, In­dia, Feb 11, CMC – Shai Hope has de­liv­ered a stark warn­ing to his West In­dies team­mates af­ter their 30-run vic­to­ry over Eng­land at the Wankhede Sta­di­um, stat­ing that there are no sec­ond chances in World Cup crick­et.