Sh­er­nice Thomas

For­mer women's na­tion­al bad­minton play­er Zeu­di Mack has been elect­ed as the new T&T Bad­minton As­so­ci­a­tion's (T&TBA) Pres­i­dent, re­plac­ing fired ex-Pres­i­dent Reno Singh. The T&TBA elect­ed its new five-mem­ber slate of ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­bers at a meet­ing at­tend­ed by var­i­ous bad­minton clubs on Sun­day at the Cen­tral Re­gion­al In­door Sports Are­na. The new com­mit­tee was elect­ed fol­low­ing the re­cent sack­ing of Singh and for­mer Vice-Pres­i­dent Ran­dolph Ram­per­sad and the res­ig­na­tion of in­ter­im sec­re­tary Shi­va Per­sad.

Singh and Ram­per­sad were re­lieved of their du­ties on March 31 by spe­cial res­o­lu­tion un­der Sec­tion 32.1 (g) of the T&TBA con­sti­tu­tion af­ter a mo­tion of no-con­fi­dence was moved against the two in a unan­i­mous 5-0 vote by mem­ber clubs. At the meet­ing on Sun­day, del­e­gates from all the clubs were pre­sent­ed ex­cept from Singh's club. Singh not­ed that his del­e­gates were not recog­nised and plead­ed with all those in at­ten­dance to al­low his club to be recog­nised as a full mem­ber for vot­ing. Fol­low­ing some dis­cus­sions, the dis­card­ed pres­i­dent's re­quest was turned down by a 12 (against)-6 (for) vote.

Speak­ing to the T&T Guardian fol­low­ing her elec­tion, Mack sig­nalled her readi­ness in tak­ing the sport to an­oth­er lev­el. The for­mer na­tion­al ath­lete be­lieves that her ex­ec­u­tive is very com­pe­tent in tak­ing the sport for­ward. "We have a good mix of per­sons who are ex­pe­ri­enced, vi­brant and most im­por­tant­ly hard-work­ing. Be­fore we had some peo­ple who were elect­ed and dropped out af­ter a while, but I know this group is will­ing to do the work. So..the as­so­ci­a­tion is in good hands." Mack stat­ed that a new con­sti­tu­tion has al­ready been draft­ed and the as­so­ci­a­tion plans to set up a new data­base for clubs. The new­ly elect­ed Pres­i­dent said that the club mem­bers re­sound­ing­ly agreed that change was need­ed to get the sport out of its "stand­still state." "We saw a need for some change. We know that we can make a dif­fer­ence. A lot of work needs to be done but, we are will­ing to do the work and take our re­spon­si­bil­i­ties se­ri­ous­ly."

Mack added that the ex­ec­u­tive would not op­er­ate in a au­to­crat­ic fash­ion and plans to adopt an "all-in­clu­sive" ap­proach where clubs would have a huge in­put in de­ci­sion mak­ing and pro­mot­ing de­vel­op­ment. "We want to adopt an all-in­clu­sive ap­proach where lines of com­mu­ni­ca­tion would al­ways be kept open, so that in­for­ma­tion can be sent to and from the clubs. Be­cause one of the ma­jor is­sues we had be­fore was the lack of club in­put due to com­mu­ni­ca­tion prob­lems." One of the ex­ec­u­tive's most press­ing ob­jec­tives is com­ing up with ways to gain funds to im­prove the as­so­ci­a­tion's fi­nan­cial state, which Mack iden­ti­fied is in a dire state cur­rent­ly. "Fi­nance aren't very good at the mo­ment, it's in a very dire state in fact! That's one of our ma­jor chal­lenges right now but, we al­ready have a few ideas for fund-rais­ers lat­er this year." The new ex­ec­u­tive still has to meet with the Min­istry of Sport, and Mack hopes that the as­so­ci­a­tion will be able to work "hand-in-hand" with the Min­istry in de­vel­op­ing the sport. A new coach­ing staff still has to be or­gan­ised and an ex­ec­u­tive board is yet to be in­au­gu­rat­ed. The board will com­prise 11 mem­bers from var­i­ous as­so­ci­a­tions in­clud­ing the T&TBA's five elect­ed of­fi­cials, um­pires as­so­ci­a­tion, two trustees and mem­bers from the sec­ondary schools bad­minton as­so­ci­a­tion. The full un­op­posed ex­ec­u­tive slate is as fol­lows: Zeu­di Mack (Pres­i­dent), Melvin Thomas (Vice Pres­i­dent), Richard Williams (Sec­re­tary), Ka­masha Robert­son (As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary) and Roger Moore (Trea­sur­er).