An­dre Bap­tise

George Bovell won his sec­ond Sports­man of the Year, Cleopa­tra Borel won her fourth Sports­woman of the Year...but alas, and that is not the re­al sto­ry. The se­nior women's foot­ballers won the Lystra Lewis award for team per­for­mance and that too was not the sto­ry.

There was even two win­ners in dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories of the Jef­frey Stollmey­er award for ad­min­is­tra­tors–the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ic Ad­min­is­tra­tions (NAAA) and the Archery Fed­er­a­tion. Even that was not the sto­ry. At least not to me!

The oc­ca­sion was the First Cit­i­zens Sports Foun­da­tion Awards, a gala event to ho­n­our those who have brought joy, pride and a smile to T&T sports, wit­nessed by many lead­ing sport­ing per­son­al­i­ties.

This year's pro­duc­tion was dif­fer­ent. The use of Nic­ki Cros­by to en­gage the ear­ly ar­rivals to Queen's Hall was en­ter­tain­ing. It was pleas­ing to wit­ness an at­tempt to im­prove mat­ters in this area, it is at least a step or two in the right di­rec­tion.

There was al­so a clear and con­vinc­ing di­vid­ing line be­tween both Nat­acha Jones and Wen­dell Con­stan­tine, as they ap­peared to have learnt about those they high­light­ed un­like pre­vi­ous years, both in de­liv­ery and in smooth tran­si­tion, sev­er­al of the sport­ing per­sons would be glad to know that the hosts cared enough to ed­u­cate them­selves on their re­spec­tive sports, this year.

There were two spe­cial mo­ments for me.

Dr Kei­th Clif­ford is a for­ward think­ing man, even if he has a ten­den­cy to be some­what ar­gu­men­tive and im­pa­tient, one is from years of in­ten­sive read­ing and knowl­edge and the oth­er some say (not me), due to the im­pend­ing evo­lu­tion of time or bet­ter de­scribed as "old age".

How­ev­er, to his cred­it, he not on­ly met the re­quired time, but iden­ti­fied the grow­ing needs of this coun­try and was suc­cinct enough to leave many think­ing. Dr Clif­ford's in­vo­ca­tion to sup­port the most for­ward think­ing idea in sports in this coun­try for a long time, pres­i­dent of the Olympic Com­mit­tee, Bri­an Lewis' idea of ten gold medals by 2024, was spot on.

An­oth­er in­no­va­tion was the de­ci­sion to have a fea­ture speak­er, Dr Hi­lary Beck­les, whose en­tire re­sume was short­ened, oth­er­wise his de­liv­ery time would have been cut in half. Dr Beck­les will be­come the Pro Vice Chan­cel­lor for the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies in May. He iden­ti­fied that gov­er­nance in Sports in the Caribbean is in a sor­ry state. Sad­ly, there was no one from the West In­dies Crick­et Board present, as the two T&T di­rec­tors would have prob­a­bly been in Ja­maica for the fu­tile elec­tions on Sat­ur­day. All present were very ap­pre­cia­tive of his words.

I would have liked to hear a few words from the Min­is­ter of Sports. While hand­ing out the top ten sport­ing per­son­al­i­ties was good, per­haps this area can be ad­dressed again.

As to pre­sen­ta­tions, it was cer­tain­ly a lot bet­ter or­gan­ised, ex­cept for lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion in re­la­tion to the ap­pear­ance of Rhean Chung on the stage, and not a rep­re­sen­ta­tive. And while it was sad, it was al­so mov­ing to high­light those from the field of sports who died in 2014.

I was moved by the pres­ence of Hock­ey ma­tri­arch Flo­rence Kelshall, who at the age of 99, caused an up­roar and brought the crowd to its feet, every sin­gle per­sons to ac­knowl­edge a true leader and ad­min­is­tra­tor, the smile on her face both ra­di­ant and im­pos­ing. Hav­ing met her over 20 years ago, it was great to watch her stand on her own and ac­knowl­edge the cheers from an ap­pre­cia­tive crowd. It was the sort of poignant mo­ment that will res­onate with all of those at Queen's Hall on the night and even those watch­ing on tele­vi­sion or lis­ten­ing on ra­dio.

The oth­er spe­cial mo­ment was when Cleopa­tra Borel said the words: "Chase your dreams." This young la­dy is the ab­solute and com­plete ath­lete. She is an un­for­giv­ing sport and as her dear­ly beloved moth­er Mar­celle Borel, who col­lect­ed the award on her be­half stat­ed, she is in Cu­ba putting her­self through the regime of dis­ci­pline work ahead of the World Cham­pi­onships in Bei­jing lat­er this year.

Faye-Ann Lyons and Bun­ji Gar­lin were able to in­spire this crowd to raise their hands and sing along with them both to start and fin­ish this pro­gramme. It was pleas­ing to watch this in­ter­ac­tion and the broad smiles on the faces of all, told a sto­ry of en­joy­ment. Per­haps this ex­plains why for the first time in the many years since I have been cov­er­ing this event, that I did not re­alise the show was over, un­til I saw the Pres­i­dent and his en­tourage leave.

Both An­tho­ny Den­ni­son and Judy Chong-Den­ni­son will be hap­py, and de­served­ly so, as well as Dex­ter Charles, the Mar­ket­ing man­ag­er at First Cit­i­zens, who seemed to be every­where on the night. But let us not ever for­get the tire­less ef­fort of the ef­fer­ves­cent Jen­nifer Lan­der, whose sport­ing back­ground al­ways en­sures that these events are well or­gan­ised.

Con­grats to all in­volved and look­ing ahead to fur­ther im­prove­ments in the in­ter­ac­tive dis­play and out­look, with links to view­ers and those in Queen's Hall, per­haps even a Peo­ple's Choice on the night, based on vot­ing a month be­fore. Just an idea.