“Own­ing our sto­ry and lov­ing our­selves through that process is the bravest thing we will ever do.” — Brené Brown

As we nav­i­gate our in­di­vid­ual life jour­neys, we in­evitably dis­cov­er that even when we deeply be­lieve we have done our ab­solute best and poured our very hearts and souls in­to a task, as­sign­ment, project, or re­la­tion­ship, there comes a time when our ef­forts run their course. Each of us even­tu­al­ly knows when we have spent every sin­gle ounce of fu­el in our re­serves, and the tank stands com­plete­ly emp­ty.

The con­clu­sion of any phase is rarely pic­ture-per­fect. There is not al­ways a neat, pre­dictable “hap­pi­ly ever af­ter” wait­ing at the fin­ish line be­cause life, by its very na­ture, is fre­quent­ly messy. In Trinidad and To­ba­go, there is an old, wise say­ing that cap­tures the ne­ces­si­ty of clear-eyed as­sess­ment: “Do see snake and say it is worm.” We can­not af­ford to min­imise re­al­i­ties or dress up hard truths in soft­er clothes out of sheer con­ve­nience or fear.

Re­cent­ly, the Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion of Na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tees (CANOC) held its high­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed 13th An­nu­al Work­shop and 24th An­nu­al Gen­er­al As­sem­bly in Willem­stad, Cu­raçao. It was a tru­ly grand af­fair. The Cu­raçao Sport and Olympic Fed­er­a­tion (FDOK) did a phe­nom­e­nal job host­ing the re­gion, and im­mense cred­it be­longs to FDOK Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Da­nia and Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al So­phien Me­rien for their out­stand­ing ex­e­cu­tion.

This gath­er­ing rep­re­sent­ed a his­toric high point in CANOC’s jour­ney to date, with in­ter­na­tion­al sports dig­ni­taries present read­ing like a glob­al “who’s who” of sport gov­er­nance. Im­mense work has gone in­to el­e­vat­ing CANOC to this lev­el of glob­al recog­ni­tion.

Kei­th Joseph’s re-elec­tion as CANOC pres­i­dent for his con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly fi­nal term of of­fice is thor­ough­ly well de­served, and the next four years will prove ab­solute­ly crit­i­cal as the or­gan­i­sa­tion builds di­rect­ly up­on its cur­rent mo­men­tum.

While my bid to be re-elect­ed as the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al along­side Pres­i­dent Joseph ul­ti­mate­ly came up short, I har­bour no re­grets. I firm­ly be­lieve that my suc­ces­sor, Cliff Williams of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, will match and like­ly ex­ceed my pre­vi­ous ef­forts.

CANOC is en­ter­ing an ex­cit­ing new chap­ter, and I am con­fi­dent that Pres­i­dent Joseph will main­tain his strong lead­er­ship to keep the or­gan­i­sa­tion mov­ing for­ward.

I have al­ways held stead­fast to the foun­da­tion­al be­lief that lead­er­ship car­ries ac­count­abil­i­ty and un­wa­ver­ing fi­deli­ty at its core. I have nev­er once shirked from those heavy re­quire­ments.

At the Gen­er­al As­sem­bly, I took full re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for an ad­min­is­tra­tive short­com­ing with­in the am­bit of the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al. That is the beau­ti­ful, en­dur­ing les­son of hav­ing played team sports. In sport, you own your mis­takes with­out reser­va­tion.

If the out­come is not what was ex­pect­ed, ex­ter­nal com­plex­i­ties and con­trib­u­to­ry fac­tors out­side of your con­trol do not mat­ter. Lead­ers are elect­ed to solve prob­lems, not re­de­fine them. You ac­cept re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, you own it com­plete­ly, and you leave it to the mem­ber­ship to de­cide. That is the essence of democ­ra­cy.

Nev­er have I hid be­hind the cow­ardice of si­lence, hop­ing an is­sue fades away. A leader pro­tects their team and their peo­ple, no mat­ter what. While sports lead­er­ship in the Caribbean re­mains vol­un­teer-dri­ven, that re­al­i­ty has nev­er been a con­ve­nient shield for me to hide be­hind.

Per­haps it was the sport of rug­by that in­stilled in me the abil­i­ty to own the im­pact of a bruis­ing tack­le or to car­ry the ball di­rect­ly in­to con­tact, know­ing full well that there are con­se­quences. How­ev­er, as the open­ing quote re­minds us, own­ing our sto­ry and lov­ing our­selves through that process is the bravest thing we will ever do.