Pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ics Ad­min­is­tra­tions of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NAAA), Ephraim Ser­rette, be­lieves this coun­try’s team head­ed to the 53rd CARIF­TA Games at the Ki­rani James Ath­let­ics Sta­di­um in St George’s, Grena­da, can sur­pass the 25 medal haul its pre­de­ces­sors won in 2025.

This week­end mem­bers of the 73-ath­lete team par­tic­i­pat­ed in their fi­nal prepa­ra­tion meet on Sat­ur­day and a last train­ing ses­sion on Mon­day, both at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, be­fore head­ing off to the Spice Isle on Thurs­day evening.

Ser­rette has spent sig­nif­i­cant time mon­i­tor­ing the group’s progress and is con­fi­dent in the ath­letes as­sem­bled to rep­re­sent the red, white, and black.

“I think we have a bunch of tal­ent­ed ath­letes,” Ser­rette said on Mon­day at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um. I’ve been com­ing to the train­ing ses­sions, and I’m very pleased with what I’m see­ing.

“I am see­ing a team here that could bring more medals than us, yet we have en­tered all re­lays, and we should be medal­ing in every re­lay. So that’s nine medals to start with.” Ser­rette added, “And then we have some in­di­vid­u­als to fo­cus on, so I am see­ing that this team could bring us 30 medals. I don’t like to re­al­ly pre­dict, but from what I am see­ing and look­ing at the re­gion and what we have been work­ing with the ath­letes, I con­sid­er them hav­ing a bet­ter medal haul than in 2025.”

Ser­rette says plan­ning for this year’s games be­gan at the end of the last edi­tion, and while lo­gis­tics have been a ma­jor part of the prepa­ra­tion, the NAAAs made a strate­gic de­ci­sion to spur the ath­letes un­der its care to push them­selves.

“There is no stan­dard to qual­i­fy; each coun­try pre­pares its own stan­dards for ath­letes,” Ser­rette ex­plained. “So, this year when we picked it up, we de­vel­oped stan­dards, and we sent it out to the clubs. A lot of the clubs in the gen­er­al coun­cil meet­ing told us the stan­dards were too high, but at the tri­als, the ath­letes de­liv­ered, and I was very hap­py for them; they ac­tu­al­ly pushed them to get to the next lev­el.”

The NAAA Pres­i­dent not­ed that the gov­ern­ing body has shown greater in­ter­est in de­vel­op­ing its hu­man re­sources; Mon­day’s ses­sion in­clud­ed a mo­ti­va­tion­al talk by Shel­don Ma­son, who en­cour­aged the young ath­letes to per­se­vere through life’s in­evitable pit­falls. With one eye on the fu­ture, Ser­rette says mould­ing the fu­ture elite ath­lete pool’s mind­set in their for­ma­tive years is of para­mount im­por­tance.

“We brought Mr Ma­son to do a mo­ti­va­tion­al ses­sion so that those who are se­ri­ous and want to make it to the next lev­el un­der­stand the path­way, can think about the sport, and be­come se­ri­ous about the sport and what the sport can do for them.”

This year’s team in­cludes CARIF­TA vet­er­ans and sev­er­al promis­ing new­com­ers. In 2025 T&T won nine gold, six sil­ver and 10 bronze, fin­ish­ing third on the fi­nal medal ta­ble be­hind ta­ble-top­pers Ja­maica, who end­ed with 78, and sec­ond over­all Ba­hamas, who copped 37.

Team TTO is sched­uled to leave Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port for Grena­da on Thurs­day at 8:25pm.