Dr Cliff Bertrand

It was with a great sense of re­lief I learned the NAAA de­cid­ed not to pur­sue the stag­ing of Carif­ta Games. I found it un­think­able that at this late stage they would even con­sid­er that op­tion. Good sense pre­vailed.

The sheer mag­ni­tude of the event, the lo­gis­tics in­volved and the lim­it­ed time avail­able made it un­wise to give any se­ri­ous thought to host­ing this. Pres­i­dent of the NAAA, Ephraim Ser­rette, in a mo­ment of emo­tion­al over­flow, act­ing on a guilty note said: "The on­ly way I can see us host­ing is if they push the Games to a lat­er date."

Why the ex­cuse af­ter the de­ci­sion? Run­ning on a deficit bud­get, the idea of the NAAA spon­sor­ing any in­ter­na­tion­al sports meet at gov­ern­ment ex­pense is hard to di­gest but not in­con­ceiv­able. No mon­ey, no plan, no ath­letes, short no­tice, one man de­ci­sion, no com­mit­tee con­sul­ta­tions, no fa­cil­i­ties & equip­ment. Over packed track and field sched­ule. Short­age of vol­un­teer of­fi­cials. What ever hap­pened to the hon­or of the "game bid" process? Doesn't the Carif­ta com­mit­tee have one? This con­ver­sa­tion should not have tak­en place. If in­deed there was a con­ver­sa­tion be­tween the NAAA and Gov­ern­ment or an ab­sen­tee Carif­ta com­mit­tee, then the NAAA should con­sult and en­force the rules of en­gage­ment of the game.

Con­sult a sport man­age­ment and mar­ket­ing firm, un­less you have spe­cif­ic and ex­ten­sive ex­per­tise in the sport event be­ing ne­go­ti­at­ed.

It may be a wise in­vest­ment to hire an in­di­vid­ual or firm with ex­per­tise in the area. The con­duct­ing of such an ac­tiv­i­ty as the Carif­ta games is not the same as a na­tion­al meet. The judg­ment to con­duct the games at so short a space of time shows a lack of the dy­nam­ics of plan­ning. Us­ing pro­fes­sion­al help is not a dis­grace but should be seen as a step in the right di­rec­tion. The NAAA is lack­ing an ad­e­quate work­force for events ex­tend­ing over mul­ti­ple days. Of­fi­cials job de­scrip­tions must be clear along with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of the po­si­tion, re­port­ing, fol­low-up, spe­cial ser­vices, strate­gic plan­ning, event man­age­ment, spon­sor­ship mar­ket­ing, pub­lic­i­ty, hos­pi­tal­i­ty, mer­chan­dis­ing, ath­let­ic en­dorse­ments, sales pro­mo­tion, etc, these must be put in place be­fore the meet can take place.

The host coun­try of the Olympic Games is dis­closed every four years. This de­ci­sion is based on a set of cri­te­ria oblig­a­tions. You don't meet them, you don't get the games. The Carif­ta games should be con­duct­ed with­in a greater time span. Two or four or odd years apart to give host coun­tries enough time to do crit­i­cal think­ing of their ca­pa­bil­i­ties and re­sources. They should find a spon­sor and not be to­tal­ly de­pen­dent on gov­ern­ment. The Carif­ta com­mit­tee's job is to as­sist the spon­sor in get­ting the most out of the events and to help then quan­ti­fy that suc­cess. How­ev­er, if the Carif­ta or­gan­i­sa­tion con­tin­u­al­ly changes its plan and builds road­blocks, cred­i­bil­i­ty will be lost and the po­ten­tial for the cor­po­rate spon­sor's fu­ture in­volve­ment will be min­i­mal.

The NAAA will be well ad­vised to think crit­i­cal­ly be­fore they act ir­re­spon­si­bly, in­ter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tion and em­pow­er­ment of its mem­bers would demon­strate jus­ti­fi­able lead­er­ship. It is nev­er too late for the ex­ec­u­tive to soul search, such an en­quiry calls in­to ques­tion deeply held as­sump­tions re­gard­ing cul­ture, mean­ing, and iden­ti­ty. The lead­er­ship should try to open the doors of com­mu­ni­ca­tion just on an ex­per­i­men­tal ba­sis. This is the cre­ative path­way to an in­te­gral re­la­tion­ship with one an­oth­er, re­sult­ing in a func­tion­al and sup­port­ive whole. Frag­men­ta­tion has no es­sen­tial re­la­tion­ship when the fu­ture of the ath­letes you claim to rep­re­sent is in your hands.