Na­tion­al sprint­er Se­moy Hack­ett has al­ready spot­ted tal­ent at her new­ly formed track club, the Lam­beau Al­liance Ath­let­ic Club "Fos­ter­ing Dreams".

"There is one boy who is nor­mal­ly at the back when they are on a run. He chas­es them down dur­ing most of the runs show­ing that he is quite com­pet­i­tive. He has that nat­ur­al com­pet­i­tive spir­it which is a good sign," said Hack­ett, who has tak­en up the role as coach fol­low­ing the re­cent launch of the club.

Sev­er­al video clips of train­ing ses­sions can be seen on her Face­book page and in one, the young run­ner she men­tioned, showed his po­ten­tial dur­ing a ses­sion at the Lam­beau Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre.

"'Ketch' him, use your arms," urged Hack­ett in the record­ing and he could be seen do­ing just that, clos­ing the gap, just as the video end­ed.

Great start for the 2015 World Cham­pi­onships bronze medal­list, who re­cruit­ed ath­letes by go­ing from house to house in her Lam­beau com­mu­ni­ty. An op­tion, she chose was be­cause she want­ed them to know the per­son do­ing the re­cruit­ing.

"They know me as 'Moyyo', that's what they call me at home. They don't re­al­ly know me as Se­moy Hack­ett so I want­ed to get out there so they could put a face to the name.

"When you are re­cruit­ing, it's some­times good for them to see you. We get a chance to meet the par­ents. Have a one-on-one in­ter­ac­tion with the par­ents.

"I know a lot of the kids grow­ing up, we were vis­it­ed by re­cruits. So I want­ed to do the same and have a one-on-one with par­ents, ex­plain to them what the club is about. Reach out to them with Tri­cia, who is well-known in the com­mu­ni­ty," said Hack­ett, re­fer­ring to Tri­cia Mc Cletchie, who she has part­nered with in run­ning the club.

She added: "Tri­cia is very ac­tive in the com­mu­ni­ty. She's al­ways ac­tive, in­volved in a lot things, like foot­ball. She is help­ful in the com­mu­ni­ty so they reach out to her. They know Tri­cia. She is open and they are com­fort­able with her so we are both in­volved in re­cruit­ing."

Ac­cord­ing to Hack­ett, the club which caters for chil­dren five to 12, just Mon­day, one of the three train­ing days for the young club, 11 bud­ding ath­letes joined but, of course, they are ob­serv­ing the COVID-19 pro­to­cols to en­sure that all are safe so they will be put them in groups.

In this way, Hack­ett will get to fos­ter the dreams of young ath­letes in the Lam­beau com­mu­ni­ty which is the sig­nif­i­cant rea­son for cre­at­ing the ath­let­ics club.

In a re­cent in­ter­view, she said that's the rea­son why she is do­ing it back home, to give my kids, my com­mu­ni­ty, my coun­try, to al­low them to reach where they can reach, adding that they shouldn't be left out of hav­ing some­one sup­port them from a young age, "to be the next Olympian, to be the next World cham­pi­on, to be the next great in what­ev­er sport they are do­ing".

On Wednes­day, the young run­ners were sched­uled to re­turn to the Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, the venue of ses­sions dur­ing the week, to con­tin­ue build­ing their re­spec­tive ath­let­ic ca­reers with the hope of earn­ing schol­ar­ships at for­eign Uni­ver­si­ties.

And on Sat­ur­days, from 8 am, the for­mer Louisiana State Uni­ver­si­ty stu­dent-ath­lete plans to in­tro­duce hill run­ning and Moses Hill in Lam­beau will pro­vide the course for those ses­sions.

<Se­moy Hack­ett Foun­da­tion>

Away from the track, the T&T sprint­er is at­tempt­ing to as­sist young ath­letes is through her Foun­da­tion which bears her name.

"Giv­ing kids the op­por­tu­ni­ties to ac­tu­al­ly to be able to pay for train­ing gears, train­ing equip­ment. If they have to pay for schools. A cer­tain per­cent­age from me will go to­wards them to pay for dif­fer­ent fees which per­tain to track and field or oth­er sports. It's ba­si­cal­ly geared to­wards help­ing ath­letes.

"Help them de­vel­op as a young per­son in­stead of them not reach­ing their goals be­cause of some fi­nan­cial is­sue."

The foun­da­tion will be host­ing a "Food Dri­ve", the Rachael Rol­lock's Food Pantry in mem­o­ry of Hack­ett's for­mer Bish­op's High school­mate, who passed away from the nov­el coro­n­avirus, which the T&T sprint­er had just re­cov­ered from at the time.

"She died on the first day of my Olympic prepa­ra­tion af­ter re­cov­er­ing from COVID my­self so my track sea­son was de­railed by COVID. The day I ac­tu­al­ly re­turned to the track was the day she died so that's why I am nam­ing it af­ter her, cause she was my class­mate and friend, so it's in re­mem­brance of her," said Hack­ett.

Her late friend would be proud of the ef­fort she is mak­ing to as­sist oth­ers. The Foun­da­tion is ask­ing any­one to give as much as pos­si­ble which in turn will be col­lect­ed and dis­trib­uted. A drop off lo­ca­tion will soon be an­nounced.

"Any food any­one wants to do­nate, we will come and col­lect and give back to the com­mu­ni­ty," said Hack­ett, who added that the Foun­da­tion plans to dis­trib­ute some 53 bags of school sup­plies to chil­dren from the age of four in the Lam­beau com­mu­ni­ty. "This will be part of giv­ing back."