In 2021, a col­lab­o­ra­tive project was con­duct­ed to look at sev­er­al as­pects of elite coach­ing in the re­gion.

The re­search team con­sist­ed of the di­rec­tor and deputy di­rec­tor of the Re­source Cen­tre for Sports Ex­per­tise and Per­for­mance in the An­tilles Guyane (CREPS An­tilles Guyane) (Mr Ed­die Cou­ri­ol and Jean-Marc Clavier), the Dean for the Fac­ul­ty of Sport UWI (Dr Ak­shai Mans­ingh), the head of the Mona Acad­e­my of Sport (Dr Sharmel­la Roopc­hand Mar­tin), the head of the Open Cam­pus Acad­e­my of Sport (Mr Kervin Jean) and the dean and deputy dean of the Fac­ul­ty of Sport Sci­ences Uni­ver­sité des An­tilles (Dr Guil­laume Coude­vylle and Dr Stéphane Sin­na­pah).

Chal­lenges faced by elite/high-lev­el coach­es was one of the top­ics ex­plored through fo­cus groups and sur­veys con­duct­ed with coach­es in eleven coun­tries in the Caribbean.

Not sur­pris­ing, the lack of fi­nances and in­ad­e­quate sport train­ing fa­cil­i­ties were at the top of the list of chal­lenges iden­ti­fied. Apart from the main­stream sports, like crick­et and foot­ball, coach­es from most coun­tries re­port­ed that fa­cil­i­ties for elite-lev­el train­ing was woe­ful­ly in­ad­e­quate. Com­mon com­plaints in­clud­ed poor sur­faces along with se­cu­ri­ty and safe­ty is­sues. Sev­er­al sports did not have des­ig­nat­ed train­ing fa­cil­i­ties and had to sched­ule train­ing around the avail­abil­i­ty of mul­ti­pur­pose courts lo­cat­ed at aca­d­e­m­ic in­sti­tu­tions or oth­er pri­vate or­gan­i­sa­tions. Coach­es in­di­cat­ed that very lit­tle funds were avail­able for pur­chas­ing ap­pro­pri­ate equip­ment and they were al­so frus­trat­ed by lim­it­ed ac­cess to cur­rent tech­nol­o­gy which al­lows in­ter­na­tion­al com­peti­tors to main­tain an ad­van­tage.

Re­mu­ner­a­tion for ser­vices was a source of dis­con­tent. In all sports, ex­cept for foot­ball, it was in­di­cat­ed that coach­ing a na­tion­al team was pri­mar­i­ly vol­un­tary work in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean. The sit­u­a­tion in the French Caribbean was slight­ly dif­fer­ent, where na­tion­al coach­es were paid; how­ev­er, most were not sat­is­fied with the amount of re­mu­ner­a­tion. The lack of re­mu­ner­a­tion was viewed as a lack of re­spect for the val­ue of a coach and was al­so iden­ti­fied as a sig­nif­i­cant de­ter­rent to pur­su­ing ad­vanced coach­ing cours­es.

Added to this was the sen­ti­ment that there were very lim­it­ed ad­vanced coach­ing cours­es avail­able in the lo­cal set­ting. Many per­sons in­di­cat­ed they would have to trav­el over­seas if they want­ed to ac­cess elite coach­ing cours­es. If we are se­ri­ous about elite sport de­vel­op­ment as a re­gion, this must be ad­dressed since ba­sic coach­ing cours­es can­not ful­ly equip coach­es for func­tion­ing at an elite lev­el. In­ad­e­quate ex­po­sure to com­pe­ti­tions and events was iden­ti­fied as a hin­drance for coach and ath­lete de­vel­op­ment for all sports. The Caribbean re­gion is small and the pool of ath­letes who are com­pet­ing at an elite lev­el is even small­er. For an ath­lete to grow and de­vel­op, it is es­sen­tial that they are con­stant­ly ex­posed to high­er lev­els of com­pe­ti­tion. For many sports, the view was ex­pressed that there are too few re­gion­al tour­na­ments. It was not­ed, how­ev­er, that even if these were in­creased, there would still be a prob­lem due to the high trav­el costs both re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. This, once more, links back to the main bar­ri­er, which was lack of fi­nances.

The lack of a sports de­vel­op­ment struc­ture was an­oth­er bar­ri­er. Coach­es felt that there was a lot of em­pha­sis on grass­roots sports and very lit­tle at­ten­tion to the ‘next step’ in ath­lete de­vel­op­ment. For many of the team sports, the coach­es in­di­cat­ed that they of­ten had to spend sig­nif­i­cant amounts of time teach­ing ba­sic skills to na­tion­al ath­letes rather than en­gag­ing in elite-lev­el train­ing ses­sions. This is a sit­u­a­tion that must be ad­dressed. Gov­ern­ments and sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions must de­vel­op struc­tured path­ways for both ath­lete and coach de­vel­op­ment. Ex­pand­ing the ‘grass­roots’ pool does not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly trans­late to elite de­vel­op­ment.

Lack of an elite sport sup­port frame­work con­tributed to high lev­els of frus­tra­tion for many per­sons. Coach­es in­di­cat­ed that they es­sen­tial­ly had to be “jacks of all trades” due to a lack of ad­min­is­tra­tive sup­port and ac­cess to sports med­i­cine per­son­nel such as doc­tors, phys­i­cal ther­a­pists, nu­tri­tion­ists and sports psy­chol­o­gists. High-per­for­mance sports cen­tres are not com­prised of ath­letes on­ly but a full team of high­ly qual­i­fied sports spe­cial­ists work­ing to­wards the com­mon goal of pro­duc­ing win­ners. These are lack­ing in our re­gion.

In most Caribbean coun­tries, sport falls un­der a com­bined min­istry which usu­al­ly re­ceives some­where be­tween one to sev­en per cent of their coun­try’s over­all bud­get. This amount is to be shared among all port­fo­lios in the com­bined min­istries. A sig­nif­i­cant pro­por­tion of the sport bud­get is di­rect­ed to­ward re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­tures, such as salaries and oth­er ex­pen­di­tures aligned to the ad­min­is­tra­tive com­po­nents of the min­istries. Most of the in­ter­na­tion­al fund­ing is linked to ‘grass­roots’ de­vel­op­ment that pro­mote com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ment and crime pre­ven­tion. Pri­vate-sec­tor fund­ing tends to be spe­cif­ic to tour­na­ments. Elite sport de­vel­op­ment re­quires the al­lo­ca­tion of a pool of funds for this pur­pose. Are our gov­ern­ments pre­pared to make this com­mit­ment?

Dr Roopc­hand Mar­tin is the Head of the Mona Acad­e­my of Sport and can be reached at sharmel­la.roopchand­martin@uwi­mona.edu.jm