For­mer pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ic Ad­min­is­tra­tion of T&T (NAAATT) Ephraim Ser­rette be­lieves he has been called for a sec­ond time to res­cue an or­gan­i­sa­tion he spent 15 years at in the area of ad­min­is­tra­tion and the same amount of years as an ath­lete.

How­ev­er, in­cum­bent pres­i­dent George Comis­siong has held back con­sid­er­a­tions to step down af­ter 26 years to con­tin­ue the work he start­ed four years ago, as the two clash on Sat­ur­day in a con­test for the top po­si­tion dur­ing the NAAATT elec­tions at the Five Rivers Sec­ondary School in Arou­ca from 2 pm.

Comis­siong’s tenure has been shroud­ed by con­cerns about the ath­letes’ per­for­mances at the Paris Olympic Games 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.

De­spite crit­i­cisms lev­elled against him, the lo­cal track and field boss be­lieves his work was de­serv­ing of an­oth­er chance at the helm.

“When I as­sumed of­fice we had a re­duc­tion of a mil­lion dol­lars in spon­sor­ships and that was known pri­or to my as­sump­tion, so we had a mil­lion dol­lars short­fall al­most im­me­di­ate­ly. Then we had the is­sue of COVID-19 to deal with, so I came in 2021 and track and field was prob­a­bly the on­ly sport that func­tioned dur­ing 2021 and we were do­ing that with­in the con­fines of all the COVID-19 pro­to­cols, so­cial dis­tanc­ing and so on,” Comis­siong said.

He said fur­ther: “We’ve had our chal­lenges fi­nan­cial­ly. Re­gard­ing the con­di­tion of the sta­di­um, we would have lost al­most six months due to the clo­sure of the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um to fa­cil­i­tate the re­fur­bish­ment of the Com­mon­wealth Youth Games. We had a shift­ing start-up and time, the ac­tu­al work on the re-lay­ing of the tracks that were ini­tial­ly planned for March, cre­at­ing some prob­lems for plan­ning, but we have worked with what we have.”

He al­so at­tempt­ed to clear the air on the Olympic un­der­per­for­mance by say­ing: “ I ap­pre­ci­ate the ex­pec­ta­tion of the wider fra­ter­ni­ty in that track and field will al­ways de­liv­er, and there­fore the un­der­stand­ing or the in­ter­pre­ta­tion of what took place at Paris 2024 was un­der­stand­able.

How­ev­er, there were 17 ath­letes rep­re­sent­ing T&T in Paris, 13 of the 17 were from track and field, so to me we’re still car­ry­ing the bur­den. It’s not an ex­cuse, it’s per­haps an ex­pla­na­tion, so for me, we are still per­form­ing, but we have been per­form­ing un­der dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances.”

Comis­siong de­lib­er­ate­ly did not se­lect a slate, not­ing that while it lent for him hav­ing a team, it was not rep­re­sen­ta­tive of him hav­ing the per­son­nel with the skillsets need­ed to man­age the af­fairs of the or­gan­i­sa­tion. He told Guardian Me­dia in an in­ter­view that he chose four per­sons whom he be­lieves would serve well in his ad­min­is­tra­tion, name­ly- Lieu­tenant Colonel Jozette McLean who will hold the po­si­tion of sec­ond vice-pres­i­dent who he con­sid­ers strong in pro­cure­ment, fi­nan­cial per­son­nel Mar­lene Roopchans­ingh-Williams as trea­sur­er, ad­min­is­tra­tive pro­fes­sion­al Eileen Black­man as gen­er­al sec­re­tary, and mu­si­cian En­ri­co Came­jo, who will as­sume the po­si­tion of di­rec­tor in Comis­siong’s team which car­ries the theme - “Pur­su­ing Per­for­mance and Progress”.

Ser­rette though 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.

Say­ing he doesn’t in­tend to re­turn to ad­min­is­tra­tion for any length of time, he al­so shared some so­lu­tions to some is­sues in the NAAAs that he said he would tack­le.

“Over the pe­ri­od, peo­ple, and clubs keep meet­ing me and say­ing that the path­way shift­ed and ac­cord­ing to what they’ve been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing and what they see hap­pen­ing, they feel that I should come back. I didn’t re­al­ly think I was go­ing back in­to track and field be­cause I thought I would have done enough - 15 years as an ath­lete and 15 years in ad­min­is­tra­tion, I thought I had con­tributed, but my com­mit­ment and my pas­sion for the sport are what led me to throw my hat back in­to the ring,” Ser­rette ex­plained.

De­spite the achieve­ments un­der Ser­rette, the long-serv­ing ad­min­is­tra­tor whose slate car­ries the theme Ath­let­ic Al­liance, said most of it was due to his for­tunes of hav­ing good ath­letes at that time.

“I wouldn’t say that the suc­cess that would have hap­pened dur­ing my tenure, had some­thing to do with the ad­min­is­tra­tion but I was for­tu­nate to have the kind of ath­letes dur­ing that time - from 2008, 2012 and then 2016, T&T was do­ing pret­ty well, so it’s a kind of re­build­ing and prob­a­bly how I would want to col­lab­o­rate with the Min­istry of Sports and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment through the ‘I Choose Sports’ to get in­to the schools, but I think the part of the puz­zle that we’re miss­ing is the par­ents.

“The par­ents don’t un­der­stand the ben­e­fits of sports, not every­body would get on the podi­um or make it to the Olympics, but it as­sists ath­letes in get­ting an ed­u­ca­tion and have a bet­ter qual­i­ty of life and that kind of thing. So some of the things that I have planned, I would have to look for more spon­sor­ships and so on be­cause a lot of the re­la­tion­ships were bro­ken down from when I left, so I’ll have to re­build,” said Ser­rette.

“I al­so want to re­brand be­cause when I went in, I re­brand­ed the NAAAs. I changed the lo­go, so my in­ten­tion is to re­brand to link with my tenure, so I want to re­brand to Ath­let­ics TTO.”

Kelvin Nan­coo, head coach of Cougars track and field club, Ja­son Roach IG Fast Lane and Shel­don Ma­son, coach of Po­lice are go­ing up as in­de­pen­dents for di­rec­tors po­si­tions.

Ephraim Ser­rette’s slate:

Paul Voisin (first vice-pres­i­dent), Michelle Stoute (sec­ond vice-pres­i­dent), Je­hue Gor­don (gen­er­al sec­re­tary), Dex­ter Voisin (as­sis­tant sec­re­tary), Michelle Al­leyne (di­rec­tor), Donelle Stafford (di­rec­tor), Davina Wash­ing­ton (di­rec­tor), Sher­win Joseph (di­rec­tor), Kelsey Tou­s­saint-Reid (di­rec­tor),Cuquie Melville (di­rec­tor).

George Comis­siong’s team:

Lieu­tenant Colonel Jozette (sec­ond vice-pres­i­dent), Mar­lene Roopchans­ingh-Williams (trea­sur­er), Eileen Black­man (gen­er­al sec­re­tary), En­ri­co Came­jo (di­rec­tor).

In­de­pen­dents

Kelvin Nan­coo (di­rec­tor), Ja­son Roach (di­rec­tor), Shel­don Ma­son (di­rec­tor).