For­mer na­tion­al strik­er Ah­keela Mol­lon is the Tech­ni­cal Di­rec­tor of Women's Foot­ball in An­guil­la.

She was ap­point­ed on a long-term con­tract, be­gin­ning No­vem­ber 1, with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for de­vel­op­ing the women's game from ju­nior to se­nior lev­els. Her du­ties in­clude con­tin­u­ous train­ing of the coun­try's Un­der-15, u-17, u-20 and Se­nior team, but Mol­lon told Guardian Me­dia Sports on Mon­day she al­so start­ed an Elite Pro­gramme which will be a feed­er pro­gramme to the na­tion­al teams.

At 36, Mol­lon who has rep­re­sent­ed T&T from the ju­nior to se­nior lev­el said she sees this op­por­tu­ni­ty as one to do what she al­ways want­ed to do and that is to de­vel­op the women's game lo­cal­ly and re­gion­al­ly, say­ing for the past six years she has worked with boys teams most­ly.

Apart from her foot­ball acad­e­my in the Cen­tral area, which to date has been a much sought-af­ter one, Mol­lon has al­so coached at Cen­tral 500 in the Cen­tral Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (CFA), Cen­tral FC un­der-20 team, Roytec in the Uni­ver­si­ty Foot­ball League, and at Ch­agua­nas North Sec­ondary in the Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League (SS­FL).

Her task is not lim­it­ed to play­ers on­ly as she al­so has the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to im­part her knowl­edge and ex­pe­ri­ence to bud­ding coach­es of the women's game there.

Mol­lon now joins an­oth­er T&T pro­fes­sion­al Stern John, a for­mer na­tion­al strik­er who leads the T&T all-time goal-scor­ing chart who was ap­point­ed coach of An­guil­la's Se­nior Men's team. "This is my first ma­jor job out­side of T&T and it will be­gin a process by which I in­tend to live my dream of im­pact­ing women's foot­ball in the Caribbean," Mol­lon said.

She laud­ed the An­guil­lan Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion for opt­ing to re­cruit pro­fes­sion­als from T&T and the Caribbean, not­ing that they eas­i­ly could have gone for a tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor from the Unit­ed States or Eu­rope, but saw it nec­es­sary ap­point her.

Mol­lon has had an im­pres­sive ca­reer dat­ing back to her ear­ly years at Holy Faith Con­vent in Cou­va in 2004, where she pro­gressed to the na­tion­al teams and al­so played in the Unit­ed States, Ice­land and Swe­den for Char­lotte La­dy Ea­gles (USA - 2008), Kvarnsve­dens IK (Swe­den- 2009), Djurgår­den Idrotts­fören­ing Fot­bolls­fören­ing (Swe­den- 2010), St­jar­nan Women's Foot­ball team (Ice­land- 2011), Af­tureld­ing (Ice­land- 2011), and Kvarnsve­dens IK (Swe­den- 2014) for a sec­ond time.

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, it was a bit­ter-sweet mo­ment for Mol­lon who said she would have loved to have been giv­en the same op­por­tu­ni­ty in her home­land, say­ing: "I have played for T&T for 19 years and have played in Eu­rope etc, but have nev­er been rec­og­nized for my con­tri­bu­tion. You know, some­times your own coun­try doesn't rec­og­nize you for the work you do but oth­er coun­tries do."

So far, she has been liv­ing her best life, do­ing what she loves to do the most while gain­ing the sup­port by all on the is­land. Mol­lon promis­es to not fol­low in the foot­steps of the T&T trend by be­gin­ning to train teams on­ly months ahead of tour­na­ments, say­ing "This is what they hired me for, to have con­tin­u­ous train­ing and prepa­ra­tion of the teams for com­pe­ti­tion."