Alvin Corneal

?Le­ston Paul's de­ci­sion to give pref­er­ence to pur­su­ing a Uni­ver­si­ty de­gree may have been one which a num­ber of our young out­stand­ing foot­ballers have cho­sen over the years, but his ex­tra­or­di­nary abil­i­ty and the heavy de­mand which was made on his nat­ur­al tal­ent re­quired him to care­ful­ly con­tem­plate the fu­ture be­fore de­cid­ing on his next move. My emo­tions run high on this de­ci­sion sim­ply be­cause the last 40 years of my life have been ded­i­cat­ed to as­sist­ing young play­ers in mak­ing that said de­ci­sion in or­der to build a sol­id foun­da­tion and bal­ance, con­sist­ing of strong aca­d­e­mics and su­perb sport­ing tal­ent. Hav­ing said that, the de­ci­sion was much more dif­fi­cult for the for­mer Na­tion­al U-17 and present U-20 cap­tain, who had ear­li­er led our teams in the World Youth Cham­pi­onships in Ko­rea and Egypt re­spec­tive­ly. He was tar­get­ed by T&T Pro League coach­es and man­age­ment to join them in their ef­fort to emerge as cham­pi­ons of the an­nu­al tour­na­ment. The al­leged in­ten­tion of these per­sons will have been to pay the young man what he may have con­sid­ered a rea­son­able wage for his ser­vices, to join the ranks of all those who felt that foot­ball would be their way of life.

And while the be­lief that sport is a way of life is ac­cu­rate, one must re­mem­ber that it is not the on­ly op­tion. The ath­letes who were able to cre­ate a bal­ance be­tween aca­d­e­mics and phys­i­cal de­vel­op­ment are present­ly reap­ing the ben­e­fits of their ear­ly de­ci­sions. Maybe that is why one must cred­it some of those who were able to shine in both ar­eas and pro­duce the type of im­age which would have en­cour­aged to­day's youth to fol­low suit. I can think of names like Dr Alvin Hen­der­son, Ian Bain, Dr Trevor Lei­ba, Dex­ter Skeene, Neil Williams, Gar­net Craig, Graeme, Chris­t­ian and Scott Ro­driguez, Veron Skin­ner, Alvin Thomas, Pe­ter Lewis, Mar­lon Charles, David Nakhid, Sha­ka His­lop, Kendall Reyes, Garth Pol­lon­ais, Bri­an Haynes and his broth­er Dr Frank Haynes, Derek Arneaud, Andy Haynes, Av­ery John, Julius James, and hun­dreds of oth­ers, in­clud­ing my own sons, who have all gained from schol­ar­ships from Uni­ver­si­ties in the USA.

And these are on­ly foot­ballers. Think of those who have blos­somed in sports like track and field, bas­ket­ball and swim­ming, through schol­ar­ships to large Uni­ver­si­ties. The pres­ence of the Pro League may have giv­en an­oth­er op­tion to some, es­pe­cial­ly those who may have come from low in­come fam­i­lies, with on­ly mod­er­ate ed­u­ca­tion­al tal­ent, and some en­thu­si­as­tic coach­es whis­per­ing an at­trac­tive sum of mon­ey for their tal­ent. No doubt, some par­ents may be re­cep­tive to these of­fers, es­pe­cial­ly with the econ­o­my be­ing in a fluc­tu­a­tive mood and bring­ing up a fam­i­ly is a fi­nan­cial chal­lenge. To­day, the de­sire of the kids to ac­cept schol­ar­ships is prob­a­bly based up­on the ex­po­sure they can get from liv­ing abroad and the his­tor­i­cal suc­cess of those who have gone be­fore them, hence the rea­son why they have not em­braced the of­fers af­ford­ed them at home. The ball is now in the court of the uni­ver­si­ties and the im­por­tance which they must pay to the de­vel­op­ment of our sports­men and women. For the past 30 years, I have been sug­gest­ing to the ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tions a method which can help us to not on­ly ed­u­cate young peo­ple aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly, but phys­i­cal­ly as well.

Why can't the fresh­men stu­dents not be made to par­tic­i­pate in one phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion pro­gramme in their ini­tial year, manda­to­ri­ly? Sure­ly, this could pro­vide an eye open­er for these young­sters to de­ter­mine the val­ue of that side of life. Sec­ond­ly, why should the Uni­ver­si­ty sys­tem not pre­pare teams in the ma­jor sport­ing dis­ci­plines and en­ter them in the pre­mier di­vi­sions in foot­ball, crick­et, net­ball, bas­ket­ball, track and field, swim­ming, and field hock­ey? In this way the stu­dents will be mo­ti­vat­ed to strike that bal­ance and keep their eyes set on achiev­ing their de­grees, to­geth­er with rep­re­sent­ing our na­tion­al teams. Don't men­tion no fund­ing, be­cause this will not be just for the sake of the stu­dents hav­ing more fun, but for their to­tal de­vel­op­ment, in­clud­ing the com­pet­i­tive spir­it which the US place on suc­cess on the field and in the class­room. Le­ston Paul has opened a door for oth­ers to fol­low. He now un­der­stands that there is life af­ter foot­ball. Just look around and see how many of the young­sters who chose the way of sports alone and where they are present­ly. Ed­i­tor's note: Alvin Corneal is a for­mer na­tion­al foot­baller and crick­eter. He was award­ed the Hum­ming­Bird Sil­ver Medal in 2009.