Bri­an Lewis

Ge­nius is one per cent in­spi­ra­tion and 99 per cent per­spi­ra­tion.

For some rea­son that quote ap­peared on my Sam­sung smart­phone while I was wait­ing to Board the flight that would land me back in Trinidad and To­ba­go on Fri­day night, around the same time as the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the Toron­to 2015 Pan Am Games was about to start.With every­one ask­ing how could I leave Toron­to on that day, I too, start­ed ques­tion­ing my­self.

It was then the quote ap­peared and I re­fo­cused.With a full com­ple­ment of ad­min­is­tra­tive sup­port in Toron­to, the Olympic Com­mit­tee had oth­er projects and ac­tiv­i­ties tak­ing place and on go­ing right here at home.

So con­trary to the per­cep­tion that the TTOC is a bunch of joy rid­ing vol­un­teer sport ad­min­is­tra­tors al­ways on the look out for the next free trip, I am back home, about to con­tin­ue the ef­forts of the TTOC. It's all about work and du­ty. The fact that ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­bers aren't paid not even a stipend is no ex­cuse for free load­ing. Du­ty calls and we go do it full stop. In and out. The work goes on.

Sport here is in a dif­fi­cult place at this time, al­though one can ar­gue the trans­for­ma­tion is well un­der way. But not every­one is up for the chal­lenge.Right now, our elite lev­el ath­letes in both in­di­vid­ual and team sports are ahead of the sport ad­min­is­tra­tors in un­der­stand­ing what must be done.

That's not an in­dict­ment of any one in par­tic­u­lar. Its just a state­ment of fact.

But I for one main­tain an op­ti­mistic at­ti­tude. Every day I meet and speak to lo­cal sport ad­min­is­tra­tors who are aware and ac­knowl­edge where we need to be.The bat­tle that they face is the lack of the crit­i­cal mass re­quired to make the break­through. I am con­vinced, how­ev­er, the mo­men­tum is shift­ing.

Once those who can make the pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence keep per­spir­ing and work­ing, the break­through is just around the cor­ner. Case in point: Foot­ball. On Sun­day, foot­ball de­ci­sion mak­ers met at the VIP Lounge at the Hase­ly Craw­ford and made a brave and bold de­ci­sion. It wasn't an easy process. There were some in­tense and hard dis­cus­sions. There was not agree­ment all the time but in the end, no mat­ter the chal­lenges and ob­sta­cles, every­one stuck to the task.

The de­ci­sion to adopt a sub­stan­tial­ly changed con­sti­tu­tion was unan­i­mous­ly adopt­ed and rat­i­fied. It was a jour­ney that took 15 months of ef­fort by a Re­form Com­mis­sion which I had the ho­n­our and priv­el­lege to serve on.All mem­bers served gratis and even dipped in­to their own pock­ets at times.

It was not an easy task. But one thing that was al­ways em­phat­ic was that con­trary to the per­ceived wis­dom, no mat­ter how strong the views, the best in­ter­est of T&T foot­ball re­mained the pri­or­i­ty.The most vo­cal and de­mand­ing views and thoughts came from the ex­pe­ri­enced heads in lo­cal foot­ball.

Many have been much ma­ligned. But when it mat­tered most, some of these same in­di­vid­u­als hav­ing in­sist­ed that their views be heard and con­sid­ered put the best in­ter­est of lo­cal foot­ball first.The adopt­ed TTFA Con­sti­tu­tion is not the cure all, but it's an im­por­tant first step for lo­cal foot­ball.

The jour­ney has just be­gun.Best wish­es to Team TTO in Toron­to. The Pan Am Games 2015 has start­ed. Lets sup­port un­con­di­tion­al­ly our ath­letes.

Bri­an Lewis is the Pres­i­dent of the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee. The views ex­pressed are not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of the Olympic Com­mit­tee.Sup­port #10 Golds24 Ath­lete Wel­fare and Prepa­ra­tion Fund. Make your do­na­tions to any branch of Sco­tia­bank ac­count num­ber 171188. Share the Olympic Dream.