The Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force is con­duct­ing the on­go­ing 2024-2025 Phys­i­cal Train­ing In­struc­tors (PTI) Course in which par­tic­i­pants were en­gaged by Dex­ter Voisin, a World Ath­let­ics Cer­ti­fied Lec­tur­er, dur­ing a ses­sion at the De­fence Force Mil­i­tary Acad­e­my, St. Mede­line, San Fer­nan­do, on Tues­day. Both the De­fence For ce and the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ics Ad­min­is­tra­tions of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NAAATT), who Voisin is an as­sis­tant gen­er­al sec­re­tary, have been work­ing in col­lab­o­ra­tion with this pro­gramme for sev­er­al years, with the NAAATT pro­vid­ing spe­cial­ized train­ing in track and field coach­ing and tech­ni­cal of­fi­ci­at­ing, while PTI stu­dents vol­un­teer their ser­vices at NAAATT events.

Tues­day’s ses­sion fea­tured the in­tro­duc­tion of the World Ath­let­ics “Kids in Ath­let­ics” Pro­gramme, which caters to chil­dren aged 4 to 14.

The pro­gram fo­cus­es on the de­vel­op­ment of fun­da­men­tal and ath­let­ic skills through struc­tured, fun ac­tiv­i­ties de­signed to fos­ter co­or­di­na­tion, bal­ance, and a love for sports at an ear­ly age.

The ses­sion aimed to en­hance the ca­pac­i­ty of PTIs to im­ple­ment struc­tured youth pro­grams across schools, com­mu­ni­ty clubs, and mil­i­tary ini­tia­tives. “This part­ner­ship un­der­scores our shared com­mit­ment to de­vel­op­ing grass­roots ath­let­ic tal­ent and con­tribut­ing to na­tion­al sport­ing ex­cel­lence,” said a key rep­re­sen­ta­tive from NAAATT.

Par­tic­i­pants en­gaged in an in­ter­ac­tive agen­da, in­clud­ing prac­ti­cal demon­stra­tions and dis­cus­sions on strate­gies for cre­at­ing pos­i­tive en­vi­ron­ments for young ath­letes. The ses­sion al­so em­pha­sised the vi­tal role of PTIs in iden­ti­fy­ing and nur­tur­ing tal­ent, help­ing to bridge the gap be­tween grass­roots de­vel­op­ment and elite per­for­mance.

Voisin, who is al­so the kids ath­let­ics lead at NAAATT and a re­tired War­rant Of­fi­cer Class 1, al­so lec­tured on prac­tic­ing a healthy lifestyle by high­light­ing the im­por­tance of phys­i­cal fit­ness and over­all well-be­ing for youth. With his ex­ten­sive back­ground in ath­let­ic de­vel­op­ment and mil­i­tary phys­i­cal train­ing.

Voisin pro­vid­ed in­valu­able in­sights, in­spir­ing par­tic­i­pants to take an ac­tive role in shap­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s next gen­er­a­tion of ath­letes while ad­vo­cat­ing for life­long fit­ness.

This col­lab­o­ra­tion con­tin­ues to play a cru­cial role in pro­mot­ing sus­tain­able ath­let­ic suc­cess by de­vel­op­ing a strong tal­ent pipeline. As the 2024-2025 PTI Course pro­gress­es, both the De­fence Force and NAAATT re­main com­mit­ted to en­hanc­ing na­tion­al youth de­vel­op­ment through in­no­v­a­tive train­ing and vol­un­teer ser­vice.