Nine­teen years in­to her um­pir­ing ca­reer, Ayan­na Mc­Clean still feels deeply about hock­ey. The 2023 Fédéra­tion In­ter­na­tionale de Hock­ey (FFIH) Um­pire of the Year is at her sec­ond Olympic Games in Paris and has fi­nal­ly been im­mersed in a true Olympic at­mos­phere.

Mc­Clean has of­fi­ci­at­ed in four Olympic hock­ey match­es, mark­ing yet an­oth­er mile­stone in her sto­ried hock­ey ca­reer.

As the high­est-ranked field um­pire in the re­gion, Mc­Clean is fol­low­ing a path set by her FIH um­pire moth­er, Cher­rill Fran­co, while blaz­ing her own trail as a tes­ta­ment to the in­domitable spir­it held in the cit­i­zens of our twin is­land state at the south­ern­most tip of the Caribbean arch­i­pel­ago.

Q: My first ques­tion is: how does it feel? I know you have been a ref­er­ee for a while now, and you’ve been all over the world as an um­pire, but can you tell me how it feels to be at the biggest mul­ti-sport event in the world, mak­ing your coun­try proud?

A: The feel­ing is slight­ly over­whelm­ing be­cause this is ac­tu­al­ly my sec­ond Olympics, and as most peo­ple know, the Tokyo Olympics were com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent; they were the lock­down Olympics. It’s the Olympics with the al­most-as­ter­isk, you know. The first time I’m ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the Olympics as it is, the full gamut of see­ing the ath­letes around, see­ing the fans around, and the im­por­tance of it all just kind of has a big­ger im­pact on me as a re­sult of see­ing every­thing buzzing and all the hard work com­ing to a cul­mi­na­tion at this point and be­ing able to show­case all the work you’ve been do­ing over the last cou­ple years or months.

I know the lock­down would have af­fect­ed your ex­pe­ri­ence sig­nif­i­cant­ly, so how does it feel now to be in a true Olympic at­mos­phere, and what does it re­al­ly mean to you per­son­al­ly?

I mean, it is an amaz­ing feel­ing, like last night, es­pe­cial­ly at the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny. It was one of those things, even though it was a dif­fer­ent open­ing cer­e­mo­ny go­ing down the Seine. The buzzing around the street, the build­ing in the air, the lev­el of ath­leti­cism that you are about to see—the ex­cite­ment is build­ing, and your chest feels tight every time you go in­to dif­fer­ent ex­pe­ri­ences. And for a sport like hock­ey around the Caribbean, it’s so dif­fer­ent be­cause you come in­to it and you’re amongst groups of of­fi­cials who you know—a bunch from the UK or a big­ger group from the US—and it’s just you from the Caribbean my­self and one oth­er per­son from the Caribbean, and you say to your­self that you’re rep­re­sent­ing not on­ly Trinidad but you’re rep­re­sent­ing the en­tire re­gion.

That leads in­to my next ques­tion. You spoke about your chest tight­en­ing and feel­ing that your small is­land-ness among the rest of the world is an in­tim­i­dat­ing at­mos­phere for you.

I don’t think the word is in­tim­i­da­tion be­cause I don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly feel in­tim­i­dat­ed. I’ve been on this field and in these tour­na­ments for a while, but it’s just that over­all ex­cite­ment, I think. Even as per­form­ers and ath­letes, when you get on stage for the first time, you have these lit­tle but­ter­flies, but I think that’s what fu­els you to make sure you have that lit­tle bit of pres­sure. I think if it’s too laisse-faire, you might not take it as se­ri­ous­ly, but this specif­i­cal­ly It’s just the ex­cite­ment, re­al­ly, to kind of blow that first whis­tle, walk out, and hear the an­thems. It’s get­ting to the mo­ment. 

And just as a sport­ing fan, how much of an ex­pe­ri­ence... How much of a vibe, just to use Trinidad and To­ba­go jar­gon, is it to be among some of the great­est ath­letes in the world and to re­al­ly some­times be in con­trol of some of the great­est ath­letes in the world?

A lot has been said in the past about how fit foot­ball ref­er­ees have to be and how pre­pared they have to be. Can you tell me what kind of prepa­ra­tion went in­to your ap­pear­ance at the Paris Olympics?

So over­all, we are very sim­i­lar to, I guess, foot­ballers in terms of the fact that two of us on the pitch are try­ing to see 22 play­ers, so there’s a lot of fit­ness re­quire­ments. At my cur­rent lev­el, we ac­tu­al­ly have four fit­ness tests a year, which in­volve a yo-yo test and a sprint re­cov­ery test that we have to sub­mit. Usu­al­ly, it’s in March and then in Ju­ly. This cy­cle, they in­tro­duced an over­ar­ch­ing coach, so it’s train­ing. I would say 4 to 6 times a week, de­pend­ing on the type of train­ing for learn­ing your re­cov­ery and all those dif­fer­ent facets, so it is a lot of work be­cause if you do a Yo-Yo test, the lev­el we have to reach is that of al­most an elite ath­lete to be able to keep up with elite ath­letes.

An­oth­er thing that gets lost in the mo­ment quite a bit is men­tal fit­ness. A big part of the prepa­ra­tion is work­ing with a sports psy­chol­o­gist and go­ing through video and that type of thing so you can un­der­stand the changes in the games.

Be­fore, we would have spo­ken about your his­to­ry. How does your fam­i­ly feel about you be­ing in Paris in 2024? I know your mom is prob­a­bly over­joyed, but just kind of de­scribe that to me.

My moth­er be­lieves that all my suc­cess­es are due to her, and she would say she got me in­to the sport, so any time I get an ap­point­ment, she is a very proud la­dy. She says I’m a chip off the old block, and I think this block must be quite small at this point. My fa­ther is a sports per­son in him­self, so he un­der­stands the lev­el of that ex­cite­ment as well, and he’s a proud per­son. I have the sup­port of my hock­ey fam­i­ly across the re­gion. I get all the well wish­es on so­cial me­dia. You have calls, you have emails, and you have What’s App mes­sages, so there is a lot of ex­cite­ment and pride not on­ly lo­cal­ly but around the re­gion.

My friends and fam­i­ly back home who are not even sports peo­ple get ex­cit­ed (say­ing), ‘I’m go­ing to get up and watch’ and I’m like, ‘it’s 3 o’clock in the morn­ing’ but it helps me stay ground­ed be­cause I am not on­ly rep­re­sent­ing my­self; I’m rep­re­sent­ing a huge com­mu­ni­ty that al­lows me to re­main ground­ed, stay fo­cused, and con­tin­ue to make every­body proud.

A top­ic we usu­al­ly save for old peo­ple What do you think of your lega­cy in the sport, not just as an um­pire but al­so as some­body who was one of the play­ers in the sport and is re­al­ly some­body show­ing the dif­fer­ent ways that you can re­main in the sport?

I’m go­ing to go back and say that my elite ca­reer isn’t over, as I am still go­ing to the Olympics, but it has just tak­en a dif­fer­ent form. A lot of the time, es­pe­cial­ly be­ing from the re­gion, you mightn’t get a lot of fund­ing for cer­tain things; there might be as­pi­ra­tions; and there are so many chan­nels that you can ex­cel at. Our ath­letes are tal­ent­ed be­yond be­lief, and I think that this is an­oth­er lev­el that we con­tin­ue to per­form at. The sport of hock­ey in Trinidad and To­ba­go has con­tin­ued to pro­duce not on­ly top ath­letes but al­so top coach­es and peo­ple like my­self in an of­fi­cial ca­pac­i­ty.

It’s the first time for a woman with­in the re­gion, the first time for a woman of colour, so those things shave that ex­tra pres­sure on your shoul­der, but it helps me be stronger, and it’s ex­cit­ing to be that per­son.

I didn’t re­alise that you knew this was as­pi­ra­tional for some peo­ple, and I hope to con­tin­ue to in­spire.

I think it is very im­por­tant to note for me that the sport of hock­ey has con­tin­ued to pro­duce a lev­el of ath­lete per­for­mances that kind of go un­no­ticed ex­cept for when it ac­tu­al­ly hap­pened. 

We work with very min­i­mal re­sources, but we are able to pro­duce a lev­el of ath­lete that is above av­er­age. 1.3 mil­lion of us con­tin­ue to pro­duce on the world stage. It hurts me some­times to think that if we had even more en­cour­age­ment and sup­port, what could the sport be like in Trinidad and To­ba­go? 

I think it’s re­al­ly im­por­tant to think about how those per­for­mances can con­tin­ue to show off the coun­try.