George Comis­siong stepped in­to the act­ing po­si­tion as head of the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ics Ad­min­is­tra­tions of T&T (NAAATT) late last year fol­low­ing the res­ig­na­tion of then-pres­i­dent Ephraim Ser­rette.

Comis­siong, at the time, held the post of first vice pres­i­dent and with the re­main­ing ex­ec­u­tive shoul­dered the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of lead­ing the body, some sev­en months ahead of the virus-de­layed Olympic Game in Tokyo, Japan, which for the first time since the Barcelona Olympics in 1992, the na­tion­al track and field team went medal-less.

Though a dis­ap­point­ing run at the Games, Comis­siong, who has served in the man­ag­er's role for sev­er­al na­tion­al teams, has re-com­mit­ted him­self to the sport, and on No­vem­ber 27 at the an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing (AGM) and elec­tion of of­fi­cers, he hopes his team will be cho­sen by the mem­ber­ship to lead the as­so­ci­a­tion.

The AGM will be con­duct­ed in a Hy­brid at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um in Cou­va from 2 pm for ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed and vir­tu­al­ly for un­vac­ci­nat­ed.

Comis­siong in­tends to run a clean cam­paign against an op­pos­ing slate head­ed by Dr Ian Hy­po­lite and be­lieves he has the right team to fill the 11 po­si­tions avail­able which in­clude six on the ex­ec­u­tive and five di­rec­tors.

He told Guardian Me­dia Sports: "We be­lieve that come No­vem­ber 28, who­ev­er is in of­fice will face sev­er­al chal­lenges and among them should not be a di­vid­ed fra­ter­ni­ty with mem­bers car­ry­ing wounds from a bit­ter cam­paign. Our fo­cus is not on mud­sling­ing; rather, we shall be con­cen­trat­ing on our plan­ning and ef­forts to­wards the ad­vance­ment of ath­let­ics."  

His team com­pris­es four per­sons from the ex­ist­ing Board to en­sure that there is both in­sti­tu­tion­al mem­o­ry and the nec­es­sary mea­sure of con­ti­nu­ity, two per­sons who would have had some pri­or ex­pe­ri­ence on what was pre­vi­ous­ly called the ex­ec­u­tive, with ex­per­tise and proven skills that would pro­vide use­ful sup­port; and five per­sons with no pri­or ex­pe­ri­ence on the Ex­ec­u­tive, but who are in­tel­li­gent, high­ly qual­i­fied, en­thu­si­as­tic and pre­pared to serve.

The in­cum­bents are Comis­siong (pres­i­dent), Dex­ter Voisin (gen­er­al sec­re­tary) and Durly Lu­cas (mem­ber) who is chal­leng­ing the sec­ond vice-pres­i­dent post. The rest of Comis­siong’s slate in­cludes Paul Voisin (first vice-pres­i­dent), Michelle Stoute (as­sis­tant gen­er­al sec­re­tary) and Mar­lene Roopchans­ingh Williams (trea­sur­er) and for di­rec­tors posts, cur­rent sec­ond vice-pres­i­dent Al­lan Ba­boolal, a mem­ber of the NAAATT for the past 35 years, Je­hue Gor­don, the 2013 Men’s 400 me­tres hur­dles World cham­pi­on, Zwede He­witt, the 2010 men’s 400m na­tion­al cham­pi­on and Ja­maal James, a mul­ti­ple men’s 800m na­tion­al cham­pi­on and Cuquie Melville are chal­leng­ing.

His plan, which is geared to­wards prepar­ing the lead­er­ship of the NAAATT for the fu­ture, as his cam­paign, is themed "Youth Meets Ex­pe­ri­ence - Pass­ing The Ba­ton" is bro­ken down in­to five "Strate­gic Pil­lars". They cov­er, fo­cus­ing on over­all ath­lete de­vel­op­ment, en­hanc­ing sup­port sys­tems, build­ing on past suc­cess­es, tak­ing ath­let­ics back to the com­mu­ni­ty, and cre­at­ing new prod­ucts and op­por­tu­ni­ties.

Comis­siong said these pil­lars are al­so the yard­stick against which they wish to be as­sessed at the end of their term

On why they did not pur­sue those strate­gies be­fore?

"The cur­rent Board did pur­sue some of them and would have achieved some mea­sure of suc­cess. How­ev­er, they were not nec­es­sar­i­ly the key fo­cus of this Board," said Comis­siong, who be­lieves his team can achieve them now.

"We have put to­geth­er a team of can­di­dates that is well bal­anced in sev­er­al re­spects e.g. in age and ex­pe­ri­ence, with a proven track record and youth­ful ex­u­ber­ance, per­sons with com­ple­men­tary and sup­ple­men­tary skills to pro­vide bal­ance in de­lib­er­a­tions and de­ci­sion mak­ing, with the ca­pac­i­ty to en­sure that de­ci­sions tak­en can be ef­fect­ed."

Comis­siong has served 23 years in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the sport and has a long list of man­ag­ing teams at all lev­els re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. This year's Olympic as­sign­ment was his fourth, hav­ing served as Team Man­ag­er for Athens 2004 (Greece), Bei­jing 2008 (Chi­na) and Rio 2016 (Brazil).

He has al­so tak­en teams from the an­nu­al Carif­ta Games up to World Ath­let­ics (for­mer­ly IAAF) World Cham­pi­onships. 

Team Comis­siong's Strate­gic Pil­lars

Fo­cus­ing on Over­all Ath­lete De­vel­op­ment

• Build­ing clos­er col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the ath­letes and ad­min­is­tra­tors

• Fa­cil­i­tat­ing ath­lete in­volve­ment in de­ci­sion mak­ing

• En­er­gis­ing the op­er­a­tions of the Ath­letes’ Sub-Com­mit­tee

• Pro­vid­ing wider ex­po­sure for ath­letes

• Ad­dress­ing the spe­cial needs of fe­males

• Es­tab­lish­ing an Ad­vi­so­ry Bu­reau for Ath­letes

Guid­ance for ath­letes on key is­sues in­clud­ing - Schol­ar­ship op­por­tu­ni­ties lo­cal and abroad; Visa and con­sular mat­ters; Cur­rent and po­ten­tial job op­por­tu­ni­ties; De­vel­op­ing “per­son­al busi­ness plans” con­sid­er­a­tion by cor­po­rate en­ti­ties; Mon­ey man­age­ment; Life af­ter ath­let­ics.

• Es­tab­lish­ing an Ath­letes’Wel­fare Fund - Fi­nan­cial and ma­te­r­i­al sup­port for de­serv­ing ath­letes

En­hanc­ing Sup­port Sys­tems

• Ca­pac­i­ty build­ing and in­sti­tu­tion­al strength­en­ing - ad­min­is­tra­tors, coach­es, tech­ni­cal of­fi­cials - to meet cur­rent and fu­ture needs

• Pro­vi­sion of an an­nu­al grant to sup­port club op­er­a­tions

• Pro­vi­sion of train­ing equip­ment and ma­te­ri­als

• Pro­vi­sion of sup­port for club events

• En­cour­ag­ing the de­vel­op­ment of fan groups lo­cal­ly and abroad

• Cre­at­ing a sym­bi­ot­ic re­la­tion­ship be­tween schools and clubs

• De­vel­op­ing a seam­less path­way – pri­ma­ry school, sec­ondary school, clubs, na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion and in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion

Build­ing on Past Suc­cess­es

• Con­tin­u­ous Im­prove­ment of ex­ist­ing process­es and ac­tiv­i­ties, iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and rec­ti­fi­ca­tion of de­fi­cien­cies

• En­hanc­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion flows

• Im­prov­ing stake­hold­er un­der­stand­ing

• In­creas­ing use of so­cial me­dia to build sup­port for the or­gan­i­sa­tion, its clubs, ath­letes and teams

• Pro­duc­tion of con­tent to pro­mote ed­u­ca­tion and in­ter­est in ac­tiv­i­ties

• In­creased digi­ti­sa­tion of sport e.g. reg­is­tra­tion of ath­letes, en­tries for events etc.

• En­hanc­ing ca­pac­i­ty to record, analyse and ma­nip­u­late rel­e­vant da­ta

Tak­ing Ath­let­ics back to the Com­mu­ni­ty

• De­cen­tral­i­sa­tion of ac­tiv­i­ties away from the sta­dia

• En­cour­ag­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion by schools in pro­grammes and events

• Part­ner­ing with mem­ber clubs, com­mu­ni­ty groups and oth­er stake­hold­ers for nov­el pro­grammes, events and meets in dif­fer­ent for­mats

• Cre­at­ing a more di­verse mem­ber­ship

• Build­ing bonds be­tween ath­letes com­mu­ni­ties

• High­light­ing and pro­mot­ing lo­cal tal­ent

• Im­prov­ing tal­ent iden­ti­fi­ca­tion

• Fa­cil­i­tat­ing re­cruit­ment from a wider tal­ent pool

Cre­at­ing New Prod­ucts and Op­por­tu­ni­ties

• Cre­at­ing a path­way to prof­itabil­i­ty

• Di­ver­si­fy­ing and ex­pand­ing rev­enue base

• Re­duc­ing de­pen­dence on Gov­ern­ment

• In­creas­ing NAAATT’s at­trac­tive­ness through im­proved in­vestor re­turns

• Cre­at­ing new part­ner­ship op­por­tu­ni­ties/at­tract­ing ad­di­tion­al spon­sors

• Part­ner­ing with mem­ber clubs, com­mu­ni­ty groups and oth­er stake­hold­ers for nov­el events

• En­hanc­ing cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence at NAAATT host­ed events

• De­vel­op­ing Strate­gic Part­ner­ships

• Af­fil­i­ates - TTOC, Coach­es As­so­ci­a­tion, Tech­ni­cal Of­fi­cials As­so­ci­a­tion, Mas­ters As­so­ci­a­tion

• Lo­cal uni­ver­si­ties, schools, and in­sti­tu­tions

• Busi­ness Cham­bers

• Me­dia

• Oth­ers – TTDF, Physio As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T, Fan Groups