Sprint­er/jumper Janae De Gannes will rep­re­sent T&T at the 49th Carif­ta Games.

This was con­firmed by Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ics Ad­min­is­tra­tion (NAAA) pres­i­dent George Comis­siong, yes­ter­day. The pre­mier youth track and field event is set to un­fold in Ja­maica over the East­er week­end (April 16-18).

“We re­cent­ly had the ad­di­tion of Janae De Gannes be­cause it was the is­sue with re­spect to vac­ci­na­tion and the NACAC’s (North Amer­i­can, Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean) po­si­tion. That has since been re­scind­ed. Janae is on the team and we are seek­ing to in­clude a U-17 girls re­lay team now that Janae is there,” said Comis­siong, “The team will be ex­pand­ed to one or two ath­letes over the next few days and should make it a lit­tle more than the 44/45 that we have now but I’m ex­cit­ed.”

De Gannes of Con­corde qual­i­fied for three in­di­vid­ual events in the girls’ U-17 cat­e­go­ry (100m, 200m, long jump) but then, due to her vac­ci­na­tion sta­tus and NACAC’s po­si­tion, was not been list­ed on the team an­nounced some two weeks ago.

Her re­turn has boost­ed the team and Comis­siong is ex­pect­ing good things from the com­pet­i­tive team, al­though not as large as in pre­vi­ous years.

He said: “I be­lieve we have a very strong team in some ways, speak­ing for my­self, I was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised, there are some ath­letes who, from day one the very first de­vel­op­ment meet we would have had they would have at­tained the Carif­ta stan­dard and they went on to re­peat it at suc­ces­sive meets so one would have ex­pect­ed com­ing out of a two years peo­ple may have been slug­gish and so on.

“In terms of the U-20 age group, they were al­ready look­ing at Carif­ta, Pan Am and World Ath­let­ics U-20 Cham­pi­onships. A few of these ath­letes would have al­ready at­tained the stan­dard for all three which au­gurs very well giv­en this ear­ly in the sea­son.”

Two such ath­letes are Rev­el Web­ster of Con­corde and Abi­lene Wild­cats’ Sha­keem McK­ay, who shined at the re­cent Carif­ta Trails host­ed by the NAAAs at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo, Port-of-Spain.

Web­ster, who will rep­re­sent T&T in the boys’ Un­der-20 100 me­tres and 4x100m re­lay, is proud of the time he ran in the 100m, 10.52, but is aim­ing to low­er that time to 10.25.

“My mind­set right now is about ex­e­cu­tion, to gain as much ex­pe­ri­ence no mat­ter the out­come, but main­ly is to gold medal or break a record or two,” he said and on the re­lay team, he added: “We have a very, very good chance in this 4x100. My team­mates are very well trained and equipped to han­dle these kinds of sit­u­a­tions. They have ex­pe­ri­ence al­so so I’m very con­fi­dent that we can achieve a gold in this.”

Mck­ay, mean­while, will fea­ture in the boys’ U-20 200m, and the 4x100m and 4x400m re­lays.

He stuck to his race strat­e­gy at the Tri­als which is why he was able to achieve suc­cess in the half-lap event

“To be hon­est it was some­thing that was planned for so once I ac­com­plished it I was just grate­ful and thank­ful to ac­com­plish that task and just head back to the draw­ing board,” said the 19-year-old.

“Right now my mind­set is just to go out there do my best, hope­ful­ly, stay in­jury-free, and just rep­re­sent and show the peo­ple the world what T&T have to of­fer.

“I am ac­cus­tomed to com­pet­ing re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly so my stop right now is to do what’s miss­ing from what I’ve set for my­self what I am miss­ing is a medal and I hope to bring back the gold medal.”

Head coach Ronald Porter Lee had his first of­fi­cial train­ing ses­sion with the na­tion­al and is op­ti­mistic about the prospects for the lo­cal ath­letes in Ja­maica.

He said, “We are try­ing to gel them to­geth­er see­ing that we had a short time es­pe­cial­ly the re­lays and our feel­ing is that we would be com­pet­i­tive and we will try our best to se­cure as many podi­um places as pos­si­ble. We got most of the ath­letes that have been se­lect­ed have achieved the stan­dards as out­lined by the NAAAs for the Carif­ta 2022 so with that in mind, we hope that they would at­tain or bet­ter these times or dis­tances in Ja­maica so that we can achieve some podi­um fin­ish­es,” said Porter Lee.

He sees the re­sump­tion of the Carif­ta Games, which were can­celled in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, caus­ing sev­er­al un­der 20 ath­letes to miss out over the past two years, as a plus.

“This is very im­por­tant for us to be able to re­build and re-es­tab­lish our­selves as one of the lead­ing na­tions in the Caribbean for track and field.”

The team is ex­pect­ed to de­part for Ja­maica on April 14 and to re­turn on April 19.