Al­ready con­tend­ing with the em­bar­rass­ment of hav­ing to with­draw from the sev­enth edi­tion of the Se­nior Pan Amer­i­can Cup—which flicked-off on Thurs­day at the Can­cha Ce­leste in Mon­te­v­ideo, Uruguay—due to a lack of fund­ing, Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Hock­ey Board (TTHB) could al­so face a se­ries rep­ri­mands, as a re­sult of miss­ing the qua­dren­ni­al in­ter­na­tion­al field hock­ey cham­pi­onship for the Amer­i­c­as.

This was con­firmed by TTHB pres­i­dent Willard Har­ris in a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia Sport on Wednes­day af­ter de­liv­er­ing the news of T&T’s with­draw­al to the Pan Amer­i­can Hock­ey Fed­er­a­tion (PAHF), the lo­cal play­ers and oth­er stake­hold­ers.

The T&T men’s team qual­i­fied as the win­ner from the 2024 Pan Amer­i­can Chal­lenge and were set to face Chile in their open­ing match yes­ter­day in Pool B, ahead of match­es against Mex­i­co and Cana­da. In the women’s Pan Amer­i­can Cup, T&T was ex­pect­ed to fea­ture against Chile to­day, fol­lowed by clash­es against Mex­i­co and the USA.

Both tour­na­ments are ex­pect­ed to be broad­cast by the me­dia and broad­cast part­ner ES­PN.

“What we’ve al­so been ad­vised, be­cause this is a tour­na­ment that is be­ing broad­cast on ES­PN, they have en­tered in­to con­tracts for deal­ing with this, and we’re go­ing to be fac­ing any cost, penal­ties that they in­cur. It will be trans­ferred to us to pay, and it’s go­ing to be, in my view, a bit puni­tive for this hock­ey board, and we can­not quan­ti­fy what that will be at this point in time.”

In an­tic­i­pa­tion of be­ing sad­dled with what­ev­er penal­ties are im­posed on the TTHB, Har­ris ex­plained that it will mag­ni­fy its ex­ist­ing debts.

When told that Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Sports and Youth Af­fairs David Nakhid said part of the rea­son for the de­lay in the pro­cess­ing of the funds was due to the TTHB be­ing non-com­pli­ant in cer­tain as­pects, par­tic­u­lar­ly in rec­on­cil­i­a­tion funds from pre­vi­ous tour­na­ments, Har­ris ex­plained, “When I came in as pres­i­dent late last year, I saw that we were faced with a cou­ple of rec­on­cil­i­a­tions of some tour­na­ments in the past. The to­tal sum we had out­stand­ing was about $88,000, and we have since re­paid over $60,000 as of to­day (Wednes­day). What we have not re­mit­ted is be­cause we don’t have much funds. We have made arrange­ments with the Sport Com­pa­ny to pay the re­main­ing amounts in three in­stal­ments, which we will be rais­ing.”

Har­ris said he was al­so an­tic­i­pat­ing some kind of fall­out with PAHF as well as the In­ter­na­tion­al Hock­ey Fed­er­a­tion (FIH), po­ten­tial­ly in the form of sus­pen­sions.

“It will im­pact our stand­ing with the Pan Am, maybe our par­tic­i­pa­tion in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. All these things we will now be crys­tallis­ing. I can’t tell you ex­act­ly what will hap­pen, but it’s go­ing to have an im­pact, and so we have to deal with it.”

Asked how T&T’s non-par­tic­i­pa­tion will im­pact the sport, the lo­cal hock­ey boss said, “We have to deal with what is be­fore us now. It will im­pact the psy­che of the cur­rent play­ers.”

In is­su­ing a pub­lic apol­o­gy to them and staff for giv­ing their time and ef­fort in prepar­ing for this tour­na­ment, Har­ris said, “I’m sor­ry that it has come to this, but we have tried our ut­most to keep them fo­cused on the prepa­ra­tions for par­tic­i­pat­ing and giv­ing all the best for the coun­try. We have been try­ing our best to get the nec­es­sary sup­port. That hasn’t hap­pened, and I apol­o­gise that we could not make it hap­pen. I un­der­stand that there will be a lot of anger and dis­ap­point­ment and stuff, but we urge them to move for­ward and let’s try and build a bet­ter hock­ey go­ing for­ward.”

He added, “Some things in­ter­nal­ly, we have to sit back down and re­view what we have done or not done. We have to make changes in­ter­nal­ly; that’s where we have to start in terms of fund­ing. Like any oth­er sport, be­cause we are de­pen­dent up­on fund­ing through the nor­mal sources of sport com­pa­nies, we have to deal with it whichev­er way we see fit.”

Tou­s­saint: Play­ers feel

let down and dis­ap­point­ed

Akim Tou­s­saint, a for­mer cap­tain of the na­tion­al men’s team and cur­rent coach of the se­nior team, said it was a very dis­ap­point­ing out­come for the team, which now feels let down by the T&T Hock­ey Board.

“We have nev­er missed a Pan Am Cup be­fore, and now due to lo­gis­ti­cal rea­sons—that we have no idea about—is the rea­son that we are not go­ing, and we lit­er­al­ly found this out the day be­fore our sched­uled first game, which I think is kind of un­ac­cept­able from an as­so­ci­a­tion or fed­er­a­tion or who­ev­er are the ones mak­ing the fi­nal call for us to go or not,” said Tou­s­saint.

“We were hold­ing the faith, and even if we were to miss the first game, and at least fight from the sec­ond game, to still try and make the semi­fi­nals is not even a pos­si­bil­i­ty for us any­more.”

Con­vey­ing the heart­break felt by his staff and play­ers, Tou­s­saint added, “Some of the guys aren’t the most fi­nan­cial­ly sta­ble and would have made a lot of sac­ri­fices in pur­chas­ing new hock­ey sticks, sneak­ers and put out a lot of mon­ey to get to the Na­tion­al Hock­ey Cen­ter for train­ing four days a week just to make sure that they got ready in the best pos­si­ble way for the tour­na­ment where we nor­mal­ly do have a good show­ing is re­al­ly dis­ap­point­ing. The play­ers are re­al­ly dis­ap­point­ed in how things have turned out, and some are even con­tem­plat­ing quit­ting the sport be­cause they have sac­ri­ficed so much just to try and make the team and to hear that the team is not go­ing any­where, the day be­fore the tour­na­ment is re­al­ly heart-wrench­ing.”