“What about south?”

This ques­tion is di­rect­ed to the Min­is­ter of Sports and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Sham­fa Cud­joe from Gun­ness Per­sad, head coach of Sim­plex Ath­let­ics Club and Sher­win Joseph, own­er, man­ag­er and coach of Max­imis­ing Ath­let­ic Po­ten­tial (MAP) Sport­ing Club.

Both clubs are based in south Trinidad and their coach­es have been try­ing for some time now, to draw at­ten­tion to the di­lap­i­dat­ed state of the Man­nie Ramjohn Sta­di­um in Mara­bel­la.

A vis­it by Guardian Me­dia Sports to the fa­cil­i­ty two weeks ago re­vealed a torn-up track, in­ac­ces­si­ble stands, faulty gym equip­ment, and no lights—not the con­di­tions that bud­ding or cur­rent na­tion­al ath­letes should have to pre­pare for lo­cal, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion un­der.

But, that is the re­al­i­ty that ath­letes in the south­ern part of the coun­try have to face dai­ly at the venue named af­ter late na­tion­al long-dis­tance run­ner Man­nie Ramjohn, who was born in San Fer­nan­do.

Per­sad has been fix­at­ed on the up­grade of the fa­cil­i­ty for sev­er­al years as he hopes to see the re­turn of meets which had stopped even be­fore the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic in 2020.

“I’m very dis­turbed about it,” said Per­sad, who has been in­volved in track and field for 62 years and coach­ing since 1974. “Since 2018, I have been com­plain­ing and writ­ing let­ters to get the track re­pair. In 2020, they gave us a lit­tle hope that they would re­pair the track for us by May, but noth­ing hap­pened.

“On ra­dio and TV, the min­is­ter said that she would like the gov­ern­ment to make more use of the sta­di­um in To­ba­go, in Grande for ex­am­ple so par­ents can come and see their chil­dren per­form and see the mix­ture be­tween ed­u­ca­tion and sport.

“Same thing, I want to see what hap­pen down in the south. Par­ents here, want to see their chil­dren run at the Man­nie Ramjohn Sta­di­um,” said Per­sad.

On­ly Tues­day, the Sports Min­is­ter vis­it­ed sev­er­al sport­ing ar­eas in East Trinidad in­clud­ing the Sur­rey Vil­lage Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre in Lopinot, Sher­wood Park, Carib Homes (Ari­ma) and the Mau­si­ca Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre. 

Joseph, a for­mer Carif­ta sil­ver medal­list (1993), for­mer na­tion­al sec­ondary schools 400m cham­pi­on, and for­mer na­tion­al ju­nior 400m cham­pi­on, would great­ly ap­pre­ci­ate some lev­el of re­pair to the track.

“The fin­ish line area as well as the start­ing line area, are in a di­lap­i­dat­ed con­di­tion. Be­cause of those ar­eas on the track, we can’t do any­thing in terms of track meets,” said Joseph, who has been coach­ing for the past 15 years. I host two ma­jor track meets in the south­ern area, which is the MAP Ju­ve­nile and MAP In­vi­ta­tion­al. We have ath­letes from across the re­gion par­tic­i­pate in our meets. The ath­letes and coach­es in this twin-is­land state look for­ward to this meet at the Man­nie Ramjohn Sta­di­um.

He point­ed out that every­body looked for­ward to the South­ern Games but with the un­avail­abil­i­ty of Guaracara Park, peo­ple look for­ward to the track meets at Man­nie Ramjohn Sta­di­um. And now we have sev­er­al meet­ings that can’t take place at the venue be­cause of the con­di­tion of the track.

He said, “We’re look­ing for the min­i­mum right now, we’re ask­ing to re­pair the fin­ish line and at the start­ing line for the 100 me­tres. That’s all we are ask­ing for right now. As well as the stands we need the stands where can have prop­er ac­com­mo­da­tions for pa­trons.”

Per­sad con­firmed that the stands are closed and they have not been giv­en an ex­pla­na­tion as to why. How­ev­er, he hopes that their plight will reach Min­is­ter Cud­joe and it will be giv­en the same at­ten­tion as oth­er parts of the coun­try. He said, “We were ask­ing for the track to be pre­pared be­cause so far this year we have can­celled five Games card­ed for south—the MAP two Games, South­ern Clas­sic, Stal­lion In­vi­ta­tion­al meet and the South Vol­un­teer Games.”

Per­sad, the 2019 T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) Alexan­der B Chap­man Award re­cip­i­ent, shared that his club Sim­plex, whose head of­fice is based in Gas­par­il­lo, has suf­fered the ef­fects of not hav­ing a prop­er train­ing fa­cil­i­ty avail­able. Due to no lights, he has had to have train­ing ses­sions ear­ly af­ter­noons (3.30 pm to 6 pm), pri­mar­i­ly for chil­dren so the work­ing ath­letes are not be­ing con­sid­ered.

“My club had about 120 ath­letes and since the COVID come and we start back, we’ve gone to nought. We have 28-30 ath­letes be­cause they can’t come to train. Af­ter all, the sta­di­um has had no lights for the longest while, over 10 years now. Stal­lion would take up their train­ing, the big­ger ones who are work­ing, they would come and train but no lights in the sta­di­um. Noth­ing is be­ing done to fix it.”

He re­vealed that, “Schools from as far as Ce­dros, Point Fortin, La Brea, Ma­yaro, and Guayagua­yare, all the schools in the south come here and I’m al­ways amazed when they come down for out­ings, you see the joy in the par­ents com­ing to see the chil­dren per­form but when they closed down the sta­di­um, no track, noth­ing could hap­pen. I’ve been ap­peal­ing over the years to get the track re­paired but it’s falling on deaf eyes.”

How­ev­er, he has a rec­om­men­da­tion for the Sports Min­is­ter, “The min­is­ter is very for­tu­nate to have as her spe­cial ad­vi­sor Mr Ephraim Ser­rette. He is one of T&T’s most ef­fi­cient sports ad­min­is­tra­tors. He took the NAAAs (Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ics Ad­min­is­tra­tion) and raised the es­teem of the NAAAs that we’ve been re­spect­ed. I would like her to make use of him, use his ca­pa­bil­i­ties, use his suc­cess in the past, he is very ef­fi­cient.”

To which Joseph point­ed out, “Track and field is one of the main sports that put this coun­try on the map any­time you have an ath­lete on the world stage whether it’s Olympics or World Cham­pi­onships, Carif­ta Games, NACAC Games, Pan Am Games, every sin­gle ath­lete go­ing on a team will have to make a stan­dard, a world stan­dard and in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dard to qual­i­fy they are not just go­ing on a plane ride be­cause some­body like them or some­body picks them or feel­ing sor­ry for them, they have to make a stan­dard and a qual­i­fi­ca­tion stan­dard.”

He said fur­ther, “How many oth­er sports have made the qual­i­fi­ca­tion stan­dards over the years? I’m not knock­ing any­body but this is the kind of treat­ment we’re get­ting as ath­letes but what we need to un­der­stand as well youths, the ju­ve­nile which is un­der-9 to un­der-13 or U-15, this is the nurs­ery of the sport. If you don’t have a nurs­ery, you don’t have any­thing to look for­ward to. And if you de­stroy your nurs­ery then this means you have no more track and field. It’s as sim­ple as that. That’s a no-brain­er.”

On the top­ic of young ath­letes, Per­sad had three fea­tures at the re­cent Carif­ta Games in Kha­reem Solomon, Kyah La For­tune and An­drew Steele, who he coached at age 10 be­fore he mi­grat­ed.

Per­sad said, “Every­body wants to be boast­ing about the Carif­ta re­sults but we could have got­ten bet­ter if we had the fa­cil­i­ty.

“This track here since 2014, they are not up­grad­ing the track so we could nev­er get faster. Look at-in Ja­maica every two, three, five years, they up­grade the track. Why is there no up­grade, here?”

He con­tin­ued, “The track is in a bad state. Our ath­letes here run­ning but our track is dead. How are they go­ing to per­form and achieve the stan­dards? Once they get a good track they will im­prove on their stan­dards. The on­ly place that you can do long jump and field events is at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, noth­ing here. We have the space here for the long jump pit, throw­ing area for shot-put, we have space here for javelin but since the sta­di­um was built, they haven’t up­grad­ed one thing. Look at the gym, it’s in a state. I was an ath­lete be­fore. I’ve seen gov­ern­ments close down Guaracara Park, Point, and Pa­lo Seco so we have no Games in the south, no place to train. There used to be the Point Fortin Games, the Pa­lo Seco Games, South­ern Games, we have noth­ing and they not even fix­ing Man­nie Ramjohn Sta­di­um.”