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Monday, February 24, 2025

Time for sports strategic pivot

by

Kwanieze John
1607 days ago
20200929

For sports to sur­vive and thrive in Trinidad and To­ba­go, there needs to be a sig­nif­i­cant re-fram­ing of the way how sports is per­ceived, to­ward an over­ar­ch­ing be­lief that in­di­vid­ual par­tic­i­pa­tion in sports is ser­vice to the coun­try.

And to be­gin this shift, there must be a strate­gic piv­ot of the mea­sure of sport­ing ex­cel­lence not on­ly from Na­tion­al Sport Or­ga­ni­za­tions (NSOs) but al­so Com­mu­ni­ty-led Sports Or­ga­ni­za­tions (CLSO).

Mag­ni­fy­ing the role, the am­a­teur or recre­ation­al en­thu­si­ast has to play will great­ly as­sist the achieve­ment of that over­all ob­jec­tive.

Sport is of­ten viewed from a very nar­row per­spec­tive, over-sim­pli­fied to the pur­suit of ex­cel­lence through com­pe­ti­tion.

Do not get me wrong - the de­sire and as­pi­ra­tion of an in­di­vid­ual to rep­re­sent his or her vil­lage, club, school, and their coun­try at re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el topped off by the pur­suit of medals has an im­por­tant role in in­still­ing pride and ac­claim.

But sports with such a sin­gu­lar fo­cus on com­pe­ti­tion will on­ly tru­ly ben­e­fit se­lect groups rather than the mass­es.

Now, it may sound cliche but there is a wider per­spec­tive that sports - by its very de­f­i­n­i­tion - can play a big­ger role in the de­vel­op­ment of a so­ci­ety.

Sport: all forms of phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty that con­tribute to phys­i­cal fit­ness, men­tal well-be­ing and so­cial in­ter­ac­tion. These in­clude play; recre­ation; or­gan­ised or ca­su­al sport; and in­dige­nous sports or games. Par­tic­i­pants may be mo­ti­vat­ed by in­ter­nal or ex­ter­nal re­wards, and com­pe­ti­tion may be with oth­ers or them­selves (per­son­al chal­lenge).

Let's dif­fer­en­ti­ate and take an hon­est look at sport be­yond com­pe­ti­tion at two ba­sic lev­els.

The first is sports per­for­mance while the sec­ond is sports par­tic­i­pa­tion.

Nu­mer­ous or­ga­ni­za­tions op­er­ate un­der the man­date of sports per­for­mance. Right­ful­ly or not, a large ma­jor­i­ty of NSOs fit this mould and their man­date can be recog­nised by their pro­grammes, of­ten geared to­wards iden­ti­fy­ing the next tal­ent and qual­i­fy­ing that tal­ent for the dif­fer­ent stages of elite com­pe­ti­tion.

How­ev­er, the num­ber of well-run and ac­tive sports clubs and groups with a more grass­roots and com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment man­date has dwin­dled sig­nif­i­cant­ly to­day. Over the course of sev­er­al years, many have suf­fered due to poor sup­port and ad­min­is­tra­tion, but more so, wrong­ful­ly adopt­ing the fo­cus of ex­clu­sive­ly de­vel­op­ing tal­ent for elite par­tic­i­pa­tion or sport for per­for­mance.

Through this ap­proach young peo­ple are in­evitably fed a nar­row nar­ra­tive, re­sult­ing in crushed dreams if no schol­ar­ship is at­tained or an in­nate feel­ing of fail­ure if they do not achieve rep­re­sen­ta­tion at the high­est lev­el. In turn, this of­ten guides them away from the many more ful­fill­ing and ben­e­fi­cial ex­pe­ri­ences avail­able through pro­longed par­tic­i­pa­tion in sport. - Good Health.

In­volve­ment in sport is not an en­tire­ly eu­phor­ic en­deav­our. Is­sues of gov­er­nance, abuse and cor­rup­tion have plagued sports sys­tems glob­al­ly and T&T has not been im­mune. There­fore, the de­liv­ery of com­mu­ni­ty sports pro­grammes is re­quired to be in­ten­tion­al­ly planned, de­signed, and ex­e­cut­ed to achieve the max­i­mum pos­i­tive im­pact.

Cre­at­ing ac­cess to sport and sport­ing pro­grammes for hu­man and com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment.

Like many busi­ness­es in the world, sports has not es­caped the wrath of the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic. Sports ac­tiv­i­ty in its tra­di­tion­al sense came to a com­plete halt with team sports tak­ing the hard­est hit with Gov­ern­ment-im­posed re­stric­tions. How­ev­er, phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty such as walk­ing, hik­ing, cy­cling con­tin­ues to be the go-to ac­tiv­i­ties for most. The more pro-ac­tive and in­no­v­a­tive sports or­gan­is­ers among the pop­u­la­tion may find tremen­dous op­por­tu­ni­ty to suc­cess­ful­ly coral these par­tic­i­pants - many of them to­tal­ly new to these ac­tiv­i­ties - in­to struc­tured com­mu­ni­ty-based “week­end war­rior” type of groups.

While this pe­ri­od has re­strict­ed or­gan­ised sport se­vere­ly, it has si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly been a re­minder that sport and phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty is a cel­e­bra­tion of what the body can do, over­come and ex­cel in and is not re­served for ath­letes. Hon­est­ly, once you can move your body, you're an ath­lete. An ath­lete of life.

Sport has an un­de­ni­able role in as­sist­ing com­mu­ni­ties in de­vel­op­ing healthy habits, in­clu­sive of com­mu­ni­ty con­nec­tion, so­cial in­clu­sion and re­la­tion­ship build­ing.

A mon­u­men­tal shift in our ap­proach and mind­set to the role of sport could lead to a healthy so­ci­ety, push­ing it to the fore­front of our coun­try's na­tion­al pol­i­cy. This way, there will in­evitably al­ways be op­por­tu­ni­ties for elite per­for­mance.

In the re­cent reread of “Who moved my cheese”, Spencer John­son, MD, tells a sto­ry of two lit­tle peo­ple and two mice, with NSOs be­ing rep­re­sent­ed as the lit­tle peo­ple - slow to change and adapt to their en­vi­ron­ment - and per­haps com­mu­ni­ty sport or­gan­i­sa­tions as the mice - mov­ing and adapt­ing quick­ly to the chang­ing en­vi­ron­ment.

This wave of change, the de­vel­op­ment of our sports in­dus­try, will swell through so­cial en­tre­pre­neur­ship and grass­roots in­no­va­tion of com­mu­ni­ty sports or­ga­ni­za­tions.

Com­mu­ni­ty sport or­gan­i­sa­tions can max­imise the tal­ents of the uni­ver­si­ty grad­u­ates be­ing churned out at our uni­ver­si­ty sports pro­grammes over the decades and em­ploy­ing their abil­i­ty to pro­vide qual­i­ty ser­vices and prod­ucts for the com­mu­ni­ties.

A ro­bust look at so­cial en­tre­pre­neur­ship in sport pro­vides an op­por­tu­ni­ty to build a health­i­er so­ci­ety through sport and phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty.

So­cial en­tre­pre­neur­ship for sport re­quires 21st-cen­tu­ry lead­ers - coura­geous and per­sis­tent in their pur­suit to use sport as a tool for de­vel­op­ment and in­vest­ments to en­able such an en­vi­ron­ment to see eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits for our coun­try.

I was elat­ed to see the merg­er of sport and com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment at the na­tion­al lev­el and hope it will in­crease the in­her­ent val­ue of sport to the com­mu­ni­ty, mak­ing it more tan­gi­ble to every­day peo­ple.

In that way, sports can play a dual role in evok­ing na­tion­al pride, de­vel­op­ing he­roes but al­so serve the de­vel­op­ment of a very healthy so­ci­ety.

I am very cu­ri­ous and pas­sion­ate about sports and phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty as a tool for so­cial de­vel­op­ment and will con­tin­ue to of­fer a per­spec­tive to pro­mote and ad­vo­cate for the pow­er of sports in the com­mu­ni­ty.

Ed­i­tor's Note:

Kwanieze John - IOC Young Leader & Sport Ed­u­ca­tor IBIS Sports Hub. The views ex­pressed in this col­umn are sole­ly those of the au­thor and they do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion of which she's a stake­hold­er.


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