Af­ter a two year ab­sence as a re­sult of the pan­dem­ic, the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed 49th edi­tion of the Carif­ta Games host­ed by Ja­maica saw Trinidad and To­ba­go’s con­tin­gent emerged with 23 medals—2 gold, 11 sil­ver and 10 bronze. There was praise from all quar­ters in­clud­ing the Pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ics Ad­min­is­tra­tion of T&T (NAAATT) who al­lud­ed to the fact that he was gen­er­al­ly pleased with the team’s per­for­mance giv­en the chal­lenges they faced over the last two years.

While this praise is war­rant­ed, it must be men­tioned that ath­letes faced heavy re­stric­tions at var­i­ous train­ing venues due to lock­downs and few­er track meets were or­gan­ised over the last two years. I am sure oth­er coun­tries faced sim­i­lar, or even dif­fer­ent prob­lems, to the T&T ath­letes. The 56 T&T ath­letes that made the trip to Kingston ul­ti­mate­ly gave their best and that was all one could have asked of them.

More im­por­tant­ly to me, while cel­e­brat­ing the achieve­ments of the ath­letes is war­rant­ed, where do we go from here? The dri­ve to es­tab­lish some of these young ath­letes in­to world-class ones need­ed to con­tin­ue yes­ter­day. I would ex­pect NAAATT to de­vel­op pro­grammes and strate­gies on the way for­ward as there is just so much work to be done.

I am strict­ly judg­ing this by way of com­par­i­son of the per­for­mance of the Ja­maican team who won a whop­ping 92 medals—45 gold, 29 sil­ver and 18 bronze. I have asked this ad nau­se­am—what are the Ja­maicans do­ing that is dif­fer­ent from T&T? How could they win 92 medals? Was COVID-19 not in Ja­maica? Were their ath­letes con­stant­ly train­ing over the last 2 years? It is ob­vi­ous that ath­lete de­vel­op­ment is a long, long way be­hind the Ja­maicans and that is not to­day; we have seen it in the last few Olympics and I am not just re­fer­ring to Us­ain Bolt. Every oc­ca­sion in which a Ja­maican com­petes, no mat­ter the name, you in­stant­ly have a feel­ing that he or she can be on the podi­um.

Has any­body tak­en the time to study their pro­grammes? The an­swer to that may be yes, well then, how come their ath­letes are so far ahead of T&T’s ath­letes? Do they pay more at­ten­tion to their pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary school’s pro­grammes in Ja­maica than in T&T? How many meets do they have a year?

Are their tracks dif­fer­ent from the tracks here? Are the train­ing fa­cil­i­ties dif­fer­ent from the fa­cil­i­ties here? What about coach­ing and coach­es? Is the qual­i­ty more ad­vanced than in T&T? Maybe, just maybe, their coach­es and train­ing meth­ods are dif­fer­ent in Ja­maica but some­how, it has con­sis­tent­ly been work­ing for them. Let us face facts—the gap is huge and I don’t ex­pect T&T to wake up in the morn­ing and sud­den­ly have its ath­letes bat­tling toe to toe with the Ja­maicans.

How­ev­er, sure­ly some­one some­where has to be look­ing at the Ja­maicans and try­ing to em­u­late their train­ing meth­ods and their pro­grammes be­cause re­sults mat­ter and it is in­dis­putably work­ing for them.

Just look at sports all over the world and coun­tries that are suc­cess­ful in a spe­cif­ic sport, oth­er coun­tries try to em­u­late them. Don’t you think the USA is not hurt­ing when 3, not 1 but 3 Ja­maican women ran 1-2-3 in the Women’s 100 me­tres fi­nal of the last Olympics? They are sure­ly ex­am­in­ing the make­up of Elaine Thomp­son-Her­ah af­ter she broke Flo-Jo’s Olympic record and would be work­ing round the clock to pro­duce some qual­i­ty woman ath­letes to get as close as pos­si­ble to Thomp­son- Her­ah.

While some of T&T’s cur­rent ath­letes will be mov­ing on to the se­nior ranks, I hope that the NAAATT of­fi­cials will be giv­ing them sus­tain­able as­sis­tance for them not on­ly to com­pete at that lev­el but to ac­tu­al­ly have a fea­si­ble chance to medal at the up­com­ing 2022 Com­mon­wealth games in Eng­land and even­tu­al­ly at the 2024 Olympics in France.

On the top­ic of sus­tain­abil­i­ty, what about the Un­der-12 ath­letes? Now is the time to look at their po­ten­tial and close the gap go­ing for­ward so that T&T may not just win 92 medals but at least over 50. Wish­ful think­ing?

Mean­while, T&T’s Un­der-17 Women So­ca War­riors are un­for­tu­nate­ly prov­ing to be no match for their com­pe­ti­tion in the 2022 CON­CA­CAF Women’s U-17 Cham­pi­onship be­ing held in San­to Domin­go. Hav­ing lost heav­i­ly to both Pana­ma (5-1) and Nicaragua (4-0) and with lit­tle hope to beat Mex­i­co, there is no doubt that the Un­der-17 team was ei­ther not ready or frankly just not good enough for their com­pe­ti­tion. I em­pathise with the young women as they are ob­vi­ous­ly try­ing their best and giv­ing 100 per cent, but they have been woe­ful­ly out­classed and out-ma­noeu­vred by their op­po­si­tion.

Women’s foot­ball world­wide has reached a dif­fer­ent lev­el from how we looked at it a few years ago. The skill and fit­ness lev­el, the men­tal ap­proach, the coach­ing and the tac­tics have im­proved sig­nif­i­cant­ly, not on­ly at the se­nior lev­el but al­so at the ju­nior lev­el, and gone are the days when you just en­ter a team in­to an in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion pure­ly for the ex­po­sure or ex­pe­ri­ence.

I note that Trinidad and To­ba­go Women’s League Foot­ball (com­mon­ly re­ferred to as WoLF) is look­ing to restart their com­pe­ti­tion lo­cal­ly but I sin­cere­ly hope they are plac­ing em­pha­sis on ju­nior tour­na­ments. It is all well and good to have se­nior women’s tour­na­ments but the of­fi­cials have to cater for the younger age groups more so as there has been no foot­ball at the Sec­ondary schools lev­el over the last 2 years.

So many of these young­sters have been de­prived of the im­por­tant de­vel­op­ment stage for many of them mov­ing on from an Un­der-16 lev­el to 18 and be­yond. Many clubs would be look­ing at these women at the Un­der-17 lev­el to draft them in­to their teams but I am not sure what many of them would have learned from the out­ing to the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic. Some of these girls would have been al­so hop­ing for good per­for­mances to some­how se­cure schol­ar­ships abroad. That may sad­ly be a dream for most of them.

I await with bat­ed breath for the re­turn of T&T’s Un­der-17 Women’s foot­ball team to hear what went wrong from coach Ja­son Spence. Be­fore the tour­na­ment start­ed, he gave the im­pres­sion that the team was well pre­pared and all things be­ing equal, should do well.