Nicholas Clarke

T&T's youngest ever na­tion­al ten­nis cham­pi­on Lar­ry Year­wood feels that the Ten­nis As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (TATT) needs to sub­mit a de­tailed pro­pos­al to cor­po­rate T&T in or­der to gain its con­fi­dence and se­cure fi­nan­cial back­ing.One of the TATT's on­ly cur­rent sources of fund­ing is through the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T, which ac­cord­ing to sources, is be­hind sev­er­al months on its pay­ments.

Year­wood, the coach of lead­ing ju­nior play­er Bre­ana Stampfli, feels that the as­so­ci­a­tion should take a more proac­tive ap­proach in its ef­fort to at­tract spon­sor­ship."There are com­pa­nies that are will­ing to help, but for them to in­vest they need to know that the prod­uct is worth­while and will reap ben­e­fits. There hasn't been a pro­pos­al put for­ward to give them that sort of as­sur­ance. There needs to be trans­paren­cy, prop­er spend­ing, cheques and bal­ances and ac­count­abil­i­ty so that they see where the in­vest­ment is go­ing."

Year­wood point­ed out that one of the rea­sons lo­cal busi­ness­es had been hes­i­tant to in­vest in ten­nis was be­cause of the fact that T&T was yet to pro­duce a world class play­er. How­ev­er, he said that fund­ing would need to come first in or­der for that to hap­pen. He wor­ries that Stampfli's po­ten­tial may nev­er be ful­ly re­alised once she is not giv­en the same op­por­tu­ni­ties as her for­eign op­po­nents.

"Bre­ana is the best tal­ent that we have had in a long time, maybe the best ever, but one of the prob­lems that she's had is that she needs to con­tin­u­ous­ly train and com­pete abroad. She needs to be al­ways look­ing ahead and not just wait­ing around in T&T for sup­port. If she's giv­en pro­vid­ed with the right re­sources, she can re­al­ly be hand­ful in the up­per ech­e­lons of in­ter­na­tion­al ladies ten­nis."

He al­so sug­gest­ed that lo­cal com­pa­nies such as Fran­cis Fash­ion Shoe Lock­er and Blue Wa­ters could use the 15-year-old in their ad­ver­tis­ing cam­paigns.

The re­cip­i­ent of T&T's first ever gov­ern­ment sports schol­ar­ship, Year­wood was al­so sup­port­ed dur­ing his ju­nior ca­reer by An­gos­tu­ra, from whom he re­ceived a $40,000 do­na­tion. He firm­ly be­lieves that ten­nis, once pro­mot­ed prop­er­ly, can have a long last­ing pos­i­tive ef­fect on so­ci­ety.