Sh­er­nice Thomas

Where are you like­ly to find sev­er­al of this coun­try's top sports­men/women who have not on­ly ex­celled in the sport­ing field but have gone on to be­come ex­perts and an­a­lysts with top in­ter­na­tion­al sports net­works where they are cur­rent­ly mak­ing our na­tion proud? Nowhere else but at this year's Sec­ondary Schools' Lead­er­ship Sym­po­sium be­ing host­ed by The Sports Desk from Mon­day April 2nd to Thurs­day April 5th at the Cas­ca­dia Ho­tel. I am just go­ing to tease you a bit when I tell you that track star Ato Boldon (an eight-time Olympic and World Cham­pi­onship medal­ist, who is rat­ed among the best an­a­lysts at the NBC net­work), crick­et­ing icon and role mod­el Ian Bish­op (the silky smooth voice of crick­et­ing's Skys­ports) and foot­ball's Sha­ka His­lop (Cham­pi­ons League foot­ball ex­pert of ES­PN), have all been con­firmed for this year's "See­ing Through the 'I'" sym­po­sium. It is such a joy to know that that the one thing this trio has in com­mon is that they are all Tri­nis. Need I say more? I am so proud of these guys, as we all ought to be! With just over two weeks to go, reg­is­tra­tion is al­most filled and if you have not reg­is­tered, you can still try, al­though I am sure that Mr. V. (short for the pro­gramme's co­or­di­na­tor Valenti­no Singh) has al­ready re­ceived more than the num­ber of par­tic­i­pants he can ac­com­mo­date. Poor Mr. V., he is al­ways so con­cerned about fa­cil­i­tat­ing all the stu­dents but at the end of the day, there is on­ly so much he can do. I know he will be dis­ap­point­ed when some of you are left out, but don't blame him since I made it clear that stu­dents will be fa­cil­i­tat­ed on a first come, first serve ba­sis.

I un­der­stand that an­oth­er very fa­mous in­di­vid­ual is lined up for the fi­nal day when we re­ceive prizes and re­view the pro­gramme and Mr. V. is keep­ing us in sus­pense, so it bet­ter be some­body whose name has the ini­tials 'BL' in it. I have al­so been told that arrange­ments are be­ing made to al­low us to use the wa­ter park on the fi­nal day but this is sub­ject to parental con­sent. Last year, a few of us went to the wa­ter park and had lots of fun but sev­er­al missed out since it was not part of the pack­age. How­ev­er, it is be­ing high­light­ed as part of the ac­tiv­i­ties and every­one will have a chance to go there but, as stat­ed be­fore, they will have to get parental con­sent.I have spo­ken to some of the reg­is­tered stu­dents and boy, are they ex­cit­ed! Imag­ine 300 of us in one venue, ben­e­fit­ing from the ex­pe­ri­ence and wis­dom of our na­tion­al he­roes and icons. Just imag­ine... we will be able to walk up to and talk with these he­roes. I am sure we could touch them too! I will def­i­nite­ly have my au­to­graph book (again!). Of course, none of this would be pos­si­ble with­out fund­ing and are very grate­ful to the proud spon­sors At­lantic and the Min­istry of Sport who are in­vest­ing so much in us. Thank you very much to the won­der­ful de­ci­sion mak­ers at these two in­sti­tu­tions. I am sure I speak for every stu­dent when I say your con­tri­bu­tions are deeply ap­pre­ci­at­ed. We must al­so thank the oth­er com­pa­nies and groups that are as­so­ci­at­ed with the pro­gramme: Toy­ota, NGC, bpTT, TSTT, RBC, SPORTT and the Red Bull team which is the of­fi­cial drink for the event. This week, we are pub­lish­ing the names of the first group of stu­dents who have been reg­is­tered and next week we will have the full list; so those of you who are not on this week's list, you still have a chance. Keep those fin­gers crossed and re­mem­ber there are some won­der­ful peo­ple out there who are in­vest­ing and be­liev­ing in us so let us all pledge to make them proud.

See you next week.