The Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs (MSYA) says the Trinidad and To­ba­go Hock­ey Board's (TTHB) fail­ure to ad­here to fund­ing poli­cies led to the de­lays which ul­ti­mate­ly forced a with­draw­al of the men's and women's teams from the Pan Amer­i­can Cup tour­na­ment in Uruguay.

Af­ter news of the teams’ with­draw­al was com­mu­ni­cat­ed by the Pan Amer­i­can Hock­ey Fed­er­a­tion on Wednes­day, TTHB pres­i­dent Willard Har­ris said this was due to a lack of fund­ing from the min­istry.

How­ev­er, in a re­lease late yes­ter­day, the min­istry sought to clar­i­fy the mat­ter. The min­istry said it had not­ed “with deep dis­ap­point­ment the with­draw­al of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Hock­ey Board (TTHB) from the Pan Amer­i­can Cup,” but point­ed out that the board had at­trib­uted its with­draw­al to “lo­gis­ti­cal chal­lenges.”

The min­istry not­ed, "The TTHB has been non-com­pli­ant in sub­mit­ting au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments on time and has not yet sub­mit­ted state­ments for 2024. Its fail­ure to ad­here to the fund­ing poli­cies es­tab­lished by the Sports Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (SporTT) sig­nif­i­cant­ly hin­dered the fund­ing ap­proval process, re­sult­ing in de­lays that neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed team prepa­ra­tions.”

The re­lease out­lined sev­er­al re­port­ed breach­es by the TTHB, in­clud­ing sub­mis­sion of its fi­nal fund­ing re­quest on May 4, 2025, de­spite know­ing of the women’s qual­i­fi­ca­tion since 2022 and the men's qual­i­fi­ca­tion since 2024.

The min­istry said as of June 13, 2025, six rec­on­cil­i­a­tion re­ports from the TTHB re­mained un­der re­view for re­im­burse­ment to SporTT.

The min­istry in­di­cat­ed that SporTT re­mained will­ing to col­lab­o­rate with the TTHB to re­solve the out­stand­ing re­im­burse­ments. It not­ed, though, that the TTHB with­drew from the tour­na­ment with­out pro­vid­ing ad­vance no­tice, al­leg­ing the board was aware of the im­pli­ca­tions of non-par­tic­i­pa­tion but did not com­mu­ni­cate this to SporTT.

But Har­ris had told Guardian Me­dia that the $1.9 mil­lion in fund­ing was re­quest­ed just be­fore the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, and the board was in talks with SporTT to en­sure the fund­ing was re­leased. He said SporTT in­di­cat­ed the ab­sence of a new board was hin­der­ing the process but still tried to fa­cil­i­tate it. Har­ris said in­for­ma­tion re­cent­ly re­quest­ed by the min­istry was pro­vid­ed to SporTT and the board was await­ing what they ex­pect­ed to be a fi­nal ap­proval on the fund­ing, be­fore they were told it would not be forth­com­ing.

Re­peat­ed ef­forts by Guardian Me­dia Sport to ob­tain com­ments from Sports Min­is­ter Phillip Watts be­fore and af­ter the team’s with­draw­al were un­suc­cess­ful af­ter the news of the with­draw­al broke on Wednes­day.

How­ev­er, last night's re­lease con­clud­ed by say­ing, “The Ho­n­ourable Phillip Watts, Min­is­ter of Sport and Youth Af­fairs, ex­pressed his dis­ap­point­ment with the sit­u­a­tion and not­ed that when sport gov­ern­ing bod­ies fail to ad­dress fi­nan­cial and com­pli­ance mat­ters such as these, it is the ath­letes that pay the ul­ti­mate price.”