On Wednes­day evening, the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) crowned cy­clist Nicholas Paul and track and field ath­lete Michelle-Lee Ahye as its Se­nior Sports­man and Sports­woman of the Year re­spec­tive­ly for 2021.

The cer­e­mo­ny which took place vir­tu­al­ly for the sec­ond year run­ning and the or­gan­is­ers 27th An­nu­al Awards event on its 75th an­niver­sary had as its themed - “The Glass in not Half-Emp­ty” - was broad­cast via video- con­fer­enc­ing plat­form Zoom, the TTOC’s YouTube chan­nel, its Face­book page, and its web­site (https://www.ttoc.org).

Mc­Clean’s iden­ti­ty was not known un­til she was in­tro­duced by the Mas­ter of Cer­e­monies Hans Des Vi­gnes just as it has been at the last six con­sec­u­tive func­tions, and keep­ing with the theme she did not dis­ap­point her au­di­ences lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

Here’s her speech...

“It came as first a shock and then an ho­n­our to be asked to be the keynote speak­er for the 2021 TTOC 27th An­nu­al Awards. It was a shock be­cause it came at two in the morn­ing while I was in South Ko­rea study­ing if I was go­ing to get any sleep be­fore my game lat­er that day. It was al­so a shock be­cause as an um­pire you are asked not to be no­ticed on the field and then you were con­sid­ered to have done a good job, but clear­ly, I had been no­ticed.

But I promise you it was al­so def­i­nite­ly an ho­n­our. Be­ing asked to speak to the sport­ing com­mu­ni­ty both here lo­cal­ly and the di­as­po­ra, as this is the sec­ond year of the vir­tu­al event, is just shy of gain­ing my Gold­en Whis­tle, in terms of ac­co­lades. But they both were a long and seem­ing­ly im­pos­si­ble jour­ney.

This year’s theme “the glass is not half-emp­ty” falls in line with a cliche we’ve prob­a­bly heard but in the cur­rent state of the world con­tin­ues to be rel­e­vant. Hon­est­ly for me though, we should not be fo­cus­ing on if the glass is emp­ty or full but more on the con­tents of the glass. Maybe for us in sport and in Trinidad and To­ba­go, what are the con­tents of our wa­ter bot­tles and cool­ers? We all know around the goal that there is a high lev­el of pes­simism, un­cer­tain­ty, and a sim­ple fear of the neg­a­tiv­i­ty wait­ing to wreak hav­oc on our men­tal state.

For ath­letes and the sport­ing world at large, there have been can­celled events, bub­ble for­mats and in­di­vid­u­als with­draw­ing from tour­na­ments mid-com­pe­ti­tion and that seems to drain you and make you feel void and out of con­trol. But ac­tu­al­ly, in our glass­es are meth­ods that helped us to fos­ter a new fo­cus and a more dy­nam­ic work eth­ic. A work eth­ic that brought sports back to where it is now and it will con­tin­ue to move us for­ward to pass where we were be­fore.

You have trimmed and tai­lored your sup­port groups to form an even tighter-knit­ted com­mu­ni­ty for those who you can trust and lean on to re­main stand­ing firm. You’ve in­creased your re­silience (last year’s theme) which is some­thing that is cer­tain­ly need­ed at this time and you’ve gained con­fi­dence, the op­po­site of fear that will force you to change for the bet­ter, evolve and grow.

From a child, I fo­cussed on the con­tent of my glass. On what should have been my first day of preschool, I turned out to be a dis­cus­sion and a ne­go­ti­a­tion with my moth­er as to why I should at­tend Bel­mont Girls RC Pri­ma­ry School with my cousin who was a year old­er than me. At 3 years old in the school­yard, I ex­plained that since my cousin and I grew up in the same home, we knew the same in­for­ma­tion and thus we be­longed at the same school. I re­fused to be­lieve that I did not have a place there. At that age I could have cried and said it’s not fair, you don’t let me do any­thing; yes at 3 but I chose the con­tent of my ed­u­ca­tion and my friend­ship with my cousin that would al­low me to stay ahead of my cur­rent year group and learn more.

Need­less to say, the dis­cus­sion end­ed with me get­ting placed in the First Year’s B Class at Bel­mont Girls RC school, a new uni­form and a new set of books by the end of the week and I think at that point my mom firm­ly de­cid­ed I was go­ing to be an on­ly child.

Know­ing the con­tent of your glass is im­per­a­tive. As a twin-is­land coun­try with less than 1.5 mil­lion peo­ple clas­si­fied as a de­vel­op­ing na­tion, we face many ob­sta­cles as we try to make our mark on the globe. For ath­letes there are al­ways con­cerns about find­ing fund­ing, bal­anc­ing sport and ed­u­ca­tion and ca­reer; you are anx­ious about find­ing fa­cil­i­ties, high enough lev­els of com­pe­ti­tion lo­cal­ly; high enough lev­els of sports in­ter­na­tion­al­ly and re­gion­al­ly and be­ing able to qual­i­fy for the rel­e­vant events.

Things as sim­ple as find­ing the short­est flight plan to get to your com­pe­ti­tion, to ac­cli­ma­tise quick­ly may be a heavy bur­den. All these things seem un­nerv­ing and for­mi­da­ble and can drain you. There are al­so the things that nour­ish and en­cour­age you to dis­cov­er new paths to suc­cess, you are forced to ac­quire new skills; how to fundraise and bud­get; you in­tro­duce more ef­fi­cient ways to new tech­nol­o­gy and that makes you work smarter and hard­er, and gain time man­age­ment skills. You are forced to step out of your com­fort zone which will al­low you to be more ag­ile both men­tal­ly and phys­i­cal­ly. In or­der to change the land­scape, there must be room for progress and your glass is not half-emp­ty at this point, it is at the point where you’re leav­ing room for growth.

As we en­ter in­to the in­ter­na­tion­al are­na there are times where we feel over­whelmed be­cause no one knows who you are and they bare­ly know where to find our coun­try on a map. You feel un­der­val­ued and un­der­es­ti­mat­ed but that can ac­tu­al­ly be a su­per­pow­er, with am­bi­gu­i­ty you do not have the ex­pec­ta­tion of pres­sure, ob­vi­ous­ly out­side of what you cre­ate your­self; but when you throw a trav­el­ling 84.58 me­tres and se­cure an Olympic gold; when you ped­al your way to be­ing the first Olympic fe­male cy­clist for your na­tion or when you slide on the slopes to be­come the first Alpine ski­er to rep­re­sent a Caribbean is­land; or when you bring home gold or sil­ver from your first Par­a­lympics and fol­low­ing it up with set­ting of world records the very next year; one may con­sid­er that all the things may have seemed to drain you are pos­si­bly what pre­pared you to tri­umph.

In 2017, I was in South Africa at a World Cup qual­i­fi­er. This qual­i­fi­er ap­point­ment came to me af­ter I had been dropped from the ju­nior World Cup list of um­pires due to lo­gis­ti­cal rea­sons and for me, I felt like there was, I had missed my op­por­tu­ni­ty. My first game at this tour­na­ment was a PanAm ri­val­ry USA ver­sus Chile, a game I was very fa­mil­iar with and very pre­pared for. Dur­ing half time I had to do a se­ries of runs to test my ra­dio as it kept falling out dur­ing the first half and on those runs, I stepped and pulled my calf mus­cle and could not put my right foot flat on the ground once again. For the sec­ond half, I was re­placed by the re­serve um­pire and I cried in the lock­er room. For the next week, I spent the time in the video booth be­ing the video um­pire, af­ter which I spent time in re­hab for the next week as well, just re­hab­bing be­tween video and train­ing.

A week lat­er I was then sent on to my sec­ond match, ex­cit­ed, ready, healthy. Three-quar­ter-way through that game a ball comes fly­ing across the field and hits me square in the right leg. I was again in ex­cru­ci­at­ing pain but at that point, I de­cid­ed I was not leav­ing the field and hon­est­ly if I was a horse I swear they would have shot me by then. Lat­er in the com­pe­ti­tion af­ter con­tin­u­ing on to do a quar­ter-fi­nal, I was sit­ting with one of the In­ter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion’s of­fi­cial com­mit­tee mem­bers look­ing at a se­mi-fi­nal match. Dur­ing the match, he asked me, “do you think you are as good as the of­fi­cials on the field?” I shrugged the ques­tions off be­cause those were my friends and I didn’t want to say any­thing. But then he per­sist­ed, “do you think you are as good as these of­fi­cials?”

My sim­ple an­swer was yes, all I need is the op­por­tu­ni­ty.

Five months af­ter that com­pe­ti­tion, with no oth­er com­pe­ti­tion un­der my belt I re­ceived an email stat­ing I was ap­point­ed to the World Cup, the first fe­male in the Re­gion to be on the field and a World Cup in the sport of hock­ey, in the CAC and PanAm re­gion.

What was the point? And at this point what was in my cup? Re­silience, a wider net­work, a high­er lev­el of video um­pire ex­pe­ri­ence, a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of be­ing a team play­er, and pa­tience, and a high­er pain thresh­old. What did I leave room for? Aware­ness, op­por­tu­ni­ty and an ap­point­ment to the World Cup. As we nav­i­gate through the next year, I want you to re­mem­ber the theme of tonight’s awards - the glass is not half emp­ty.

The con­tent of your glass is your past wins and suc­cess­es, your past loss­es and lessons, the friend­ships you’ve made, the ac­co­lades you’ve re­ceived, knowl­edge and skills you have de­vel­oped in the face of ad­ver­si­ty. In that glass al­so is the room for growth and the re­al­iza­tion that your op­por­tu­ni­ties are end­less and boun­ti­ful with the right mind­set. There are more com­pe­ti­tions to con­quer, new tech­nol­o­gy and skills to try and dis­cov­er, a new path to tra­verse in life and in sport. As we forge in­to 2022 think about what you will make room for and every­thing that is left to fill your glass be­cause there are times when you need to sip out of that glass to make sure there is room for more. Con­tin­ue to be ready for what will be poured in­to it next.”

TTOC 2021 Awards Ho­n­our Roll

Sports­man of Year - Nicholas Paul (Cy­cling)

Sports­woman of the Year - Michelle-Lee Ahye (Ath­let­ics)

Ju­nior Sports­man - Nikoli Black­man (swim­mer)

Ju­nior Sports Woman - Rae-Anne Serville (Ath­let­ics)

Fu­ture is Fe­male award - Anisa Mo­hammed - (Crick­et)

Peo­ple’s Choice Award - Nicholas Paul - (Cy­cling)

Alexan­der B Chap­man Award - El­ton Prescott SC (At­tor­ney)

TTOC Sports Per­son­al­i­ty of the Year - Tyra Git­tens (Ath­let­ics)