For­mer pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ic Ad­min­is­tra­tion (NAAATT) Ephraim Ser­rette made a tri­umphant re­turn to the head of or­gan­i­sa­tion af­ter beat­ing in­cum­bent George Comis­siong 56 to 21 votes at the NAAATT elec­tion held at the Five Rivers Sec­ondary School in Arou­ca on Sat­ur­day.

Comis­siong’s tenure was shroud­ed with con­cerns about the ath­letes’ per­for­mances at the Paris Olympics, where not a sin­gle medal was won, dat­ing back to his en­try in­to his po­si­tion as pres­i­dent back in 2021 dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. 

Ser­rette, who spent 15 years in the area of ad­min­is­tra­tion in the sport be­fore step­ping away from the top spot ahead of Comis­siong’s start to his ca­reer four years ago, said his re-en­try in­to the sport came from con­cerns by clubs and oth­er mem­bers of the fra­ter­ni­ty.

Ser­rette led the or­gan­i­sa­tion for well over a decade, and he has seen some of the na­tion’s best-ever per­for­mances. 

Speak­ing af­ter his vic­to­ry, Ser­rette said the NAAATT has come a long way with the clubs all in­volved in the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process, which went well.

Serette said he plans to con­tin­ue the de­vel­op­ment of the sport with the help of all the clubs and work on get­ting cor­po­rate T&T to get more in­volved.

It was a clean-sweep for Ser­rette’s Ath­let­ic Al­lience slate which com­prised a mix­ture of youth and ex­pe­ri­ence with the Voisin broth­ers Dex­ter and Paul, and Je­hue Gor­don who served with Comis­siong be­ing re-elect­ed by 77 del­e­gates from the 39 clubs that were present. Each club were en­ti­tled to two votes but not all clubs were reprseent­ed by two del­e­gates.

Ser­rette, 67, the long-serv­ing ad­min­is­tra­tor, said some of his ob­jec­tives in­clude re­brand­ing the NAAAs to Ath­let­ics TTO, talk­ing to the Sports Com­pa­ny of T&T (Sports) with the aim of es­tab­lish­ing a tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor for the sport, and de­vel­op­ing a high per­for­mance cen­tre where­by young ath­letes with na­tion­al team po­ten­tial can be iden­ti­fied ear­ly and have the chance to be de­vel­oped, while he al­so wants to see some of the past na­tion­al ath­letes put in­to use in mo­ti­va­tion­al ses­sions for the ath­letes as well.

He said that with re­gards to To­ba­go, Serette said, “We al­so need to serve To­ba­go clubs much bet­ter be­cause in re­cent times they have suf­fered a lot from the lack of fund­ing from the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, and we need to do a bet­ter job in as­sist­ing those clubs in gen­er­al.”

He point­ed out that with the new con­sti­tu­tion, the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process was well ex­e­cut­ed. 

He said this team of ded­i­cat­ed pro­fes­sion­als brings a wealth of ex­pe­ri­ence and pas­sion to the sport, promis­ing in­no­v­a­tive strate­gies and ini­tia­tives to ad­vance ath­let­ics in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The NAAATT ex­tends heart­felt grat­i­tude to all out­go­ing board mem­bers for their ser­vice and con­tri­bu­tions. We al­so want to thank all the clubs mem­bers for their par­tic­i­pa­tion in this de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process. To­geth­er, we re­main com­mit­ted to em­pow­er­ing ath­letes, sup­port­ing de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes, and fos­ter­ing a thriv­ing ath­let­ics cul­ture.

Oth­ers on Ser­rette’s slate in­clud­ed an ex­pe­ri­enced sup­port­ing cast made up of for­mer T&T Marathn cham­pi­on Paul Voisin, who was re-elect­ed First Vice Pres­i­dent (un­op­posed), Michelle Stoute (Sec­ond Vice Pres­i­dent), Je­hue Gor­don (Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary), Davina Wash­ing­ton (Trea­sur­er), Cuquite Melville (Di­rec­tor), Donelle Stafford (Di­rec­tor), Michelle Pen­nie (Di­rec­tor), Kelsey Tou­s­saint-Reid (Di­rec­tor), and Sher­win Joseph (Di­rec­tor).

New NAAATT Ex­ec­u­tive 2024-2027

Pres­i­dent: Ephraim Ser­rette bt George Com­mis­siong 56 -21

First Vice-Pres­i­dent: Paul Voisin (Un-op­posed)

Sec­ond Vice-Pres­i­dent: Michelle Stoute bt Jozette Mc Lean 57-20

Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary: Je­hue Gor­don bt Eileen Black­man 57 - 20

Trea­sur­er: Davina Wash­ing­ton bt Mar­lene Roopchans­ingh 56-18

Di­rec­tors: Cuquite Melville (56), Michelle Pen­nie (52), Kelsey Tou­s­saint-Reid (50), Donelle Stafford (49), Sher­win Joseph (39).