The Aquat­ic Sports As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (ASATT) was ad­mon­ished by Sham­fa Cud­joe, the Min­is­ter of Sports and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, for at­tempt­ing to paint it­self as a vic­tim of not get­ting gov­ern­ment fund­ing on Fri­day, when in fact it was be­cause of the or­gan­i­sa­tion's late sub­mis­sion for fund­ing.

On see­ing the no­tice post­ed on an In­sta­gram ac­count ttowa­ter­po­lo on Fri­day evening with the head­ing - "Na­tion­al Team woes", the Min­is­ter shared it on her Face­book page and wrote: "I of­ten won­der why sport­ing bod­ies do this. You know ful­ly well that you were ex­treme­ly late and dis­or­gan­ised when it came to sub­mit­ting your re­quest for fund­ing. So why now make this pub­lic cry, know­ing that you were wrong?

"The pol­i­cy is that re­quests must be sub­mit­ted at least eight weeks be­fore the event, you sub­mit mere two weeks ago and ex­pect mag­ic. Howwww????".

The ttowa­ter­po­lo post stat­ed: "This coun­try's na­tion­al men and women wa­ter po­lo ath­lete's dream of medal­ing at the Cen­tral Amer­i­can and CAC Games next year in El Sal­vador may have been dashed as the Aquat­ic Sports As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go have been un­able to ac­quire fund­ing to send the team. The ath­letes who have trained very hard were hope­ful that fund­ing would come in time to se­cure flight to Bar­ba­dos to com­pete in the CC­CAN Cham­pi­onships, which is the on­ly qual­i­fi­er for the CAC games. A top three fin­ish at the CAC Games would have al­so meant qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the PanAmer­i­can games on the Olympic path­way."

In an­oth­er re­sponse, the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T (SporTT) is­sues a news re­lease yes­ter­day un­der the head­ing - "WA­TER­PO­LO FUND­ING CLAR­I­FI­CA­TION" which reads: "The Sport Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go Lim­it­ed (SporTT) would like to ad­dress con­cerns from Wa­ter Po­lo stake­hold­ers with re­gards to a per­ceived lack of fund­ing sup­port for re­gion­al com­pe­ti­tion. The Aquat­ic Sports As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (ASATT) sub­mit­ted its fi­nal cov­er­ing doc­u­ments and bud­gets to SPORTT on Ju­ly 1, 2022, for the Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean Am­a­teur Swim­ming Con­fed­er­a­tion (CC­CAN) re­gion­al Wa­ter Po­lo Cham­pi­onships. The com­pe­ti­tion is sched­uled to be held from 19-27 of Ju­ly 2022, which is on­ly eigh­teen days af­ter sub­mis­sion.

"In its reg­u­lar meet­ings with Na­tion­al Gov­ern­ing Bod­ies of Sport (NG­Bs), SPORTT em­pha­sizes that we re­quire three months lead time for fund­ing re­quests. This is to en­sure that all ef­forts can be made in prop­er time to get teams fund­ed, booked, and ready for trav­el.

"Un­for­tu­nate­ly, giv­en to the un­time­li­ness of the ASATT’s sub­mis­sion, fund­ing has not been pro­vid­ed at this point. SPORTT re­mains com­mit­ted to work­ing with all stake­hold­ers to en­sure that all av­enues for fund­ing are ex­plored. We al­so wish to re­mind NG­Bs of the im­por­tance of mak­ing time­ly sub­mis­sions and con­duct­ing the busi­ness of sports in an or­gan­ised and re­spon­si­ble man­ner."

Swim­ming is one of 15 sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions that is fund­ed by SporTT.

On June 23, ASATT is­sued a press re­lease that stat­ed: "Aquat­ics Sports As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (ASATT) is proud to an­nounce our ath­letes who have been se­lect­ed to rep­re­sent Trinidad and To­ba­go to seek qual­i­fi­ca­tions for the 2023 Caribbean, Cen­tral Amer­i­can, and San Sal­vador Games."

Bar­ba­dos is the host of the 2022 CC­CAN Wa­ter Po­lo Cham­pi­onships from Ju­ly 19-27.

Guardian Me­dia Sports un­der­stand that ASATT got fi­nan­cial sup­port from cor­po­rate T&T and the teams de­part­ed Pi­ar­co for Bar­ba­dos Sat­ur­day af­ter­noon.

On Thurs­day, the swim team led by Nikoli Black­man placed 12th over­all at the  CC­CAN Swim­ming Cham­pi­onships in Bar­ba­dos.

Black­man won three gold medals in the 200m, 100m, and 50m freestyle events. Black­man al­so cap­tured two sil­ver medals in the 50m but­ter­fly and back­stroke events.

Zachary An­tho­ny struck bronze in the Boys 13-14 200m in­di­vid­ual med­ley, while Ale­jan­dro Agard cap­tured bronze in the Boys 11-12 100m breast­stroke and Jo­hann Mata­moro cap­tured bronze in the Boys 15-17 100m back­stroke events.

Mata­moro, Black­man, An­tho­ny, and Aaron Stu­art swim their way to bronze in the 4x100m med­ley re­lay.

T&T wa­ter­po­lo teams

Men: Zepha­ni­ah Tay­lor-Salden­ha, Christo­pher El­liott, Jean-Luc Hinds, Ja­son Hack­ett, Tyrece Joseph, Leon Daniel, Kelvin Cae­sar, Ser­gio Des Vi­gnes, Dante Drakes-Mc Kell, Yan­nick Robert­son, Akheem Valen­tine, Ethan El­liott, Liam West­field.

Women: Sum­mer Gib­son, Olivia Neck­les, Jae­da At­tong-Ju­lian, Megan Stafford, Bre­an Jor­dan, Chan­tal Newal­lo, Aaliyah Aching, Nia Bas­combe, Shemiyah Ross.