Shal­iza Has­sanali

T&T's Olympic gold medal­list Keshorn Wal­cott will re­turn to school in Sep­tem­ber. Wal­cott yes­ter­day signed his let­ter of ac­cep­tance to the Cer­tifi­cate in Sport Stud­ies Pro­gramme at the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT) for the 2012-2013 aca­d­e­m­ic year. The pro­gramme, which be­gins on Sep­tem­ber 3, 2012, comes un­der full schol­ar­ship which will cov­er per­son­al se­cu­ri­ty for Wal­cott, as well as books, room and board, meals, equip­ment, a lap­top, trans­porta­tion, stipend and health in­sur­ance.

The val­ue of the schol­ar­ship was not dis­closed. UTT will al­so re­name and ded­i­cate its High Per­for­mance Pro­gramme and build a var­si­ty sta­di­um in Wal­cott's ho­n­our. Wal­cott's man­ag­er, Sean Roach, said T&T's sec­ond gold medal­list wants to start the pro­gramme next month. "We have got­ten all the pack­ages to­day. We know that he (Wal­cott) wants to start in Sep­tem­ber so we are go­ing to be re­view­ing it a cou­ple of days and see what else is be­ing of­fered. I know there is a great sports man­age­ment pro­gramme here (UTT)."

Wal­cott could not say what he wants to fo­cus on, ed­u­ca­tion wise. "I am not look­ing for ben­e­fits for my­self. For the coun­try it will be great, know­ing that we will have an ad­di­tion­al sta­di­um to train and have com­pe­ti­tions. Now, UTT is get­ting their own sta­di­um. I am sure there are ath­letes at UTT who may have trou­ble in train­ing," Wal­cott said beam­ing with pride, when asked what he thought about the var­si­ty sta­di­um that will be named af­ter him.

The sign­ing took place at UTT's O'Meara cam­pus in the pres­ence of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing Min­is­ter Fazal Karim, UTT's chair­man Cur­tis Man­choon, UTT's act­ing pres­i­dent Dr Fazal Ali, Wal­cott's coach Is­mael Lopez and Roach two days af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port that Wal­cott would be grant­ed a schol­ar­ship from UTT as his re­ward for gold medal per­for­mance in the men's javelin throw at the Lon­don Olympics last Sat­ur­day.

Wal­cott, 19, of To­co won the event with a throw of 84.58 me­tres. The cer­tifi­cate in sport stud­ies runs for one year, Karim ex­plained. "Then that leads to the bach­e­lor's de­gree. There is a fu­ture ahead in terms of how do you move from where he (Wal­cott) is now to where he can be," Karim said. Karim said UTT will pro­vide all the re­sources nec­es­sary to main­tain, im­prove and en­hance Wal­cott's per­for­mance on the field.

Karim al­so re­vealed that Gov­ern­ment was in search of lands for the sta­di­um, which will not be mam­moth like the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Port-of-Spain. "What we will be look­ing at is track and field fa­cil­i­ties ded­i­cat­ed to ath­let­ic stu­dents." In a UTT let­ter dat­ed Au­gust 15, ad­dressed to Wal­cott, it states, "Fur­ther to the an­nounce­ment of the ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter, the UTT here­by for­mal­ly of­fers you a schol­ar­ship to pur­sue your ed­u­ca­tion and con­tin­ue your train­ing as part of our High Per­for­mance Ath­let­ic Pro­gramme."

Karim said once Wal­cott agrees to have the High Per­for­mance Pro­gramme at UTT re­named in his ho­n­our, "We in­tend to en­gage in dis­cus­sions with your man­age­ment to work out an en­dorse­ment con­tract, as is re­quired, to fa­cil­i­tate your name, im­age and like­ness in an ad­ver­tis­ing cam­paign for the pro­gramme of the Acad­e­my of Sports and Leisure Stud­ies at UTT."

Wal­cott will be re­quired to en­ter in­to a schol­ar­ship con­tract with UTT, which will set out the val­ue of the schol­ar­ship and de­tails on his du­ties and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties as a stu­dent-ath­lete. Karim al­so an­nounced that UTT will en­gage the ser­vices of Roach as Wal­cott's cur­rent coach.

Karim said he wants to con­tin­ue col­lab­o­rat­ing with Wal­cott in recog­ni­tion of his sig­nal ac­com­plish­ment, know­ing that he has al­ready cre­at­ed a big im­pact on T&T's youth. "In ad­vance of this high per­for­mance ath­let­ic pro­gramme that the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go, em­bark im­me­di­ate­ly, on de­sign ar­chi­tec­ture for its own uni­ver­si­ty sta­di­um. That will be some­thing of a dream come true, but it is al­so in pur­suance of what lies ahead for the per­for­mance of our ath­letes."

Karim said he in­tends to take the pro­pos­al to Cab­i­net to ac­quire the lands need­ed for the sta­di­um. "I al­ways be­lieve that things do not hap­pen by chance but cer­tain­ly by in­ter­ven­tion." Roach said this was a hap­py mo­ment for Wal­cott and him­self. "This whole process and jour­ney was a team ef­fort. The plan for Keshorn to join the UTT pro­gramme was not a plan that came af­ter the medal. It was al­ways in our plans. When we set our goals out for Keshorn and for the ac­com­plish­ments that we want­ed him to achieve this year...one of the goals was ed­u­ca­tion."

Roach said they want­ed to start Keshorn's jour­ney with the best pro­gramme avail­able and felt UTT was the ide­al in­sti­tu­tion. "The fact that Keshorn was stay­ing home to train...we want­ed to en­sure that some of the suc­cess­es on his jour­ney was home­grown. The Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go was prob­a­bly one of the best de­ci­sions ever made." Roach said he hopes that Wal­cott can use his brand to push and de­vel­op UTT.

Roach de­scribed Wal­cott's achieve­ment as a ves­sel that was need­ed in the coun­try.

"When you get a na­tion­al suc­cess at this lev­el it is not just for one per­son...it's every­body's in­put, dreams and prayers. Every­body played an im­por­tant part. And even with him com­ing to UTT, this is an­oth­er part of that jour­ney."