Kali­fa Mc­Collin, one of four cur­rent T&T pro­fes­sion­al net­ballers, re­cent­ly vis­it­ed with some of T&T’s young and up­com­ing na­tion­al net­ballers by in­vi­ta­tion from in­ter­im Un­der-23 coach So­journ­er “Suzie” Hyles, who is prepar­ing the na­tion­al youth team for the up­com­ing Caribbean Games.

She has al­so been keep­ing fit and ‘beat­ing the books’, how­ev­er, what the most re­cent cap­tain of the “Ca­lyp­so Girls” has not been do­ing is prepar­ing with the na­tion­al train­ing team for the Birm­ing­ham Com­mon­wealth Games in Eng­land with the net­ball com­pe­ti­tion set to pass off on Ju­ly 29 be­cause she has been side­lined by the T&T Net­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTNA).

“When the first week of train­ing start­ed, school al­so start­ed. In the sec­ond week, there was a meet­ing with the team but I had school stuff to do so I missed the meet­ing,” said Mc­Collin, 26, who for the first time in five years is based at home as she is pur­su­ing an un­der­grad­u­ate de­gree in ed­u­ca­tion at the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT).

“As I wasn’t able to make it to the train­ing ses­sions, I asked the man­ag­er to pro­vide me with the gym pro­gramme, the train­ing pro­gramme to do re­mote­ly. And that I would try to or­gan­ise to meet up with the team twice a week for train­ing be­cause this is how it’s done all over the world. Pro­fes­sion­al net­ballers go to school and they train with their teams.

“The man­ag­er told me ‘if I can’t come then don’t both­er to come back’. I then re­ceived a mes­sage say­ing ‘Re­moved from group’ (What­sapp).”

Mc­Collin, who has rep­re­sent­ed ju­nior (Un­der-16), cap­tained the youth (U-21) and se­nior teams, shared that in the past she has missed school be­cause of rep­re­sent­ing T&T in the sport.

“Every­where else, play­ers’ or­gan­i­sa­tions give the play­ers some­thing. TTNA has giv­en noth­ing. Noth­ing to show. It’s just us, me, giv­ing my time, I can’t ac­cept that,” said a hurt Mc­Collin. “I shouldn’t have to choose be­tween net­ball, rep­re­sent­ing my coun­try, and my ed­u­ca­tion.”

‘Pro­fes­sion­al’ was al­so the term used by TTNA pres­i­dent Sher­ry-Ann Black­burn in sup­port­ing the de­ci­sion made by the man­ag­er as the goal-at­tack spe­cial­ist has been un­avail­able.

“Kali­fa is a pro­fes­sion­al so she should know to op­er­ate pro­fes­sion­al­ly. Kali­fa is not the on­ly per­son at school. Noth­ing was com­ing from Kali­fa. If there was a con­ver­sa­tion then it would be ad­dressed pro­fes­sion­al­ly. The man­ag­er asked for de­tails,” said Black­burn. “Train­ing is five times a week and you can’t at­tend none. There needs to be a cul­ture shift as to how we man­age the sport.

“The man­ag­er made ef­forts to com­mu­ni­cate with Kali­fa but did not get feed­back. The man­ag­er re­quest­ed her class sched­ule to work out a com­pro­mise in terms of train­ing. If that is not forth­com­ing then it’s the next step.

Mc­Collin, who made her se­nior na­tion­al team de­but in 2014 at age 17, shared that she did re­spond to the man­ag­er when asked for her class sched­ule via What­sApp at the time say­ing: “I don’t have any in­for­ma­tion at all. Nor­mal­ly, I have Mon­day - Fri­day from 9 am to 4 pm. But the se­mes­ter ends in two weeks and that is go­ing to change.”

She added, “I told her that I couldn’t give a di­rect an­swer as the se­mes­ter hadn’t fin­ished so I had no clue what my class sched­ule would look like but I will try to tai­lor to suit them.

Mc­Collin, who is al­so a Lev­el II coach, has al­so played three sea­sons in the Vi­tal­i­ty Net­ball Su­per­league in Eng­land, two sea­sons with the Celtic Drag­ons and one with the benecos Mav­er­icks, and was among the “Ca­lyp­so Girls” that com­pet­ed in the 2019 Net­ball World Cup in Liv­er­pool and the 2015 edi­tion in Syd­ney. She al­so played one sea­son with the South­ern Steel in the ANZ Pre­mier­ship League in New Zealand and last sea­son com­pet­ed with the Colling­wood Mag­pies in the Sun­corp Su­per Net­ball League in Aus­tralia.

The three oth­er pro net­ballers are Aus­tralian-based Saman­tha Wal­lace (New South Wales Swifts), who re­cent­ly had surgery on her right knee, Jameela Mc Carthy, whose de­but sea­son in Eng­land end­ed pre­ma­ture­ly with the Sara­cens Mav­er­icks due to an in­jury and Shaquan­da Greene-Noel, who has been among the top de­fend­ers in the Eng­lish Vi­tal­i­ty Net­ball Su­per­league with the Celtic Drag­ons.

Asked if Mc­Collin will be wel­comed back to train­ing if she was in­ter­est­ed, Black­burn said: “The team has not yet been se­lect­ed. There must be two-way com­mu­ni­ca­tion. She needs to go back to the man­ag­er and com­mu­ni­cate,” said the TTNA pres­i­dent, who al­so con­firmed that there has been changes to the coach­ing staff as Althea Mc­Collin is no longer head coach of the se­nior na­tion­al team

Black­burn said, “She has been re­lieved of her du­ties. Part of it was that af­ter a re­view of the Tri Se­ries in Ja­maica, the per­for­mance was not at the stan­dard we want to build on so we de­cid­ed to make ad­just­ments and put sys­tems and per­sons in place, then we will re­view. It was tough see­ing the re­sult of the se­ries”

In Oc­to­ber, T&T, who was cap­tained by Kali­fa, was swept 3-0 by the Ja­maican “Sun­shine Girls”. The na­tion­al train­ing squad, who trains Mon­day, Wednes­day and Thurs­day from 3pm to 8pm, is cur­rent­ly un­der the guid­ance of an in­ter­im staff coach Kem­ba Dun­can, a for­mer na­tion­al play­er who served as as­sis­tant coach in the Ja­maica se­ries, and she is be­ing sup­port­ed by Joel “Twig­gy” Young-Strong.

The 10th-ranked “Ca­lyp­so Girls” will open the net­ball com­pe­ti­tion at the Com­mon­wealth Games against host Eng­land and is al­so grouped with New Zealand, Malawi, Ugan­da and North­ern Ire­land in Group B while in Group A are Aus­tralia, Ja­maica, South Africa, Scot­land, Wales and Bar­ba­dos.

Each pool plays five pre­lim­i­nary match­es against the oth­er teams in their pool, re­ceiv­ing two points for a win, one point for a draw and ze­ro for a loss. The top two teams in each pool qual­i­fy for the se­mi-fi­nals. The re­main­ing teams will com­pete in play-offs to de­ter­mine each team’s fi­nal plac­ing on Au­gust 5.

The semi­fi­nals are sched­uled for Au­gust 6. The gold/sil­ver fi­nal and the bronze medal play-off is set for Au­gust 7.