It’s not just about be­ing on the court prepar­ing for the up­com­ing Caribbean Games in Guade­loupe for the mem­bers of the na­tion­al Un­der-23 net­ball squad and its tech­ni­cal staff but al­so about ex­pand­ing their minds.

On Wednes­day, the group of play­ers, led by na­tion­al coach So­journ­er “Suzie” Hyles along with her tech­ni­cal staff of as­sis­tant coach Si­mone Mor­gan and man­ag­er Vanes­sa Forde, ac­com­pa­nied by T&T Net­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTNA) pres­i­dent Sher­ry-Ann Black­burn, in­dulged in an ed­u­ca­tion­al tour, vis­it­ing the Cen­tral Bank Mu­se­um.

“This was the first vis­it for many of the team mem­bers and we were all elat­ed to share the same space with the Gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank of T&T Dr Alvin Hi­laire. Dr Hi­laire wel­comed us and gave an en­ter­tain­ing in­tro­duc­tion about the his­to­ry of the Mu­se­um,” said coach Hyles.

“We had a very in­for­ma­tive tour, it is a must-see for all mem­bers of the pub­lic. We learned many new things about the bank and our mon­ey, for ex­am­ple—The tran­si­tion from cot­ton to poly­mer; the dif­fer­ent fea­tures of our mon­ey and the mean­ing of in­fla­tion (which was well dis­played us­ing gro­cery items from their su­per­mar­ket sec­tion.”

The rea­son for the ed­u­ca­tion­al tour ac­cord­ing to coach Hyles is to en­sure the play­ers are ed­u­cat­ed in ar­eas of the econ­o­my as it re­lates to in­fla­tion and al­so al­lows each play­er an op­por­tu­ni­ty to learn the role and func­tion of the Cen­tral Bank.

“These are all im­por­tant to the play­ers as we thrive to give our play­ers knowl­edge on and off the court. This in turn will al­low them to be able to make in­formed fi­nan­cial de­ci­sions,” said Hyles.

“It’s for the play­ers to know the oth­er as­pects of Cen­tral Bank. Ex­am­ples, are the Fi­nan­cial Ser­vices Om­buds­man; the Na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Lit­er­a­cy Pro­gramme. These are all part of the Cen­tral Bank.

“Al­so, for a fu­ture job ca­reer and what it en­tails to be a part of the Cen­tral Bank fam­i­ly and sim­ply even learn­ing about how the build­ing was ac­tu­al­ly built and the rea­son for the Cross Brac­ing Struc­ture (that is the X) around the tow­er.”

The group was al­so giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to sug­gest ways we can ad­vise the Cen­tral Bank on how to grow the econ­o­my and what they thought will be the fu­ture of mon­ey?

The team which in­clude se­nior play­ers Tia Bruno and Des­tiny Williams got to view a full com­ple­ment of art from var­i­ous artists through­out T&T and the Caribbean. This is al­so high­light­ed in the bank’s art col­lec­tion pub­li­ca­tion that is on sale at the Mu­se­um.

Hyles added, “The mu­se­um staff was very pro­fes­sion­al and knowl­edge­able. They were strate­gi­cal­ly lo­cat­ed and read­i­ly avail­able to an­swer any ques­tions we had dur­ing our vis­it.

“Thanks to the Gov­er­nor, the man­age­ment team and the staff of the Cen­tral Bank Mu­se­um.”

On Thurs­day, the mem­bers of the na­tion­al train­ing squad al­so did some com­mu­ni­ty work, in­ter­act­ing with the Heart of Mind net­ball team of the Betham Gar­dens as “a bound­ing ses­sion with young minds,” ac­cord­ing to Hyles.

Back in April, the squad ven­tured down Point Fortin at the re­quest of Ma­jor Saleema Thomas to com­pete in an ex­hi­bi­tion match and a prac­tice match as they con­tin­ue to pre­pare for the in­au­gur­al Caribbean Games, which is sched­uled to take place from June 29 to Ju­ly 3.

Re­cent­ly, the net­ball com­pe­ti­tion was in jeop­ardy of not tak­ing place due to the own­er of the venue in the City of Baie-Ma­hault pulling out of stag­ing the event. Fol­low­ing an emer­gency meet­ing of the Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion of Na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tees (CANOC) ex­ec­u­tive board and mem­bers of the lo­cal or­gan­is­ing com­mit­tee, it was de­cid­ed to shift the venue to the Lau­ra Fles­sel Sports Com­plex in Pe­tit-Bourg.