The old adage - 'to whom much is giv­en, much is ex­pect­ed' is still ap­plic­a­ble to­day, and maybe it would be for­ev­er.

Shenelle Mo­hammed, a for­mer na­tion­al ten­nis ace, is seek­ing to re­in­force this by call­ing for more to be done if the coun­try wants bet­ter per­for­mances and more achieve­ments at in­ter­na­tion­al tour­na­ments.

Mo­hammed is a three-time na­tion­al ten­nis cham­pi­on who has won the Tran­quil­li­ty Open Ten­nis tour­na­ment at least five times. But as she en­ters the fray of coach­ing, Mo­hammed has high­light­ed the rea­sons why the cur­rent COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, cou­pled with the re­luc­tance by the gov­ern­ment to open pub­lic fa­cil­i­ties for use by play­ers, have put T&T ten­nis and its play­ers at a dis­ad­van­tage to their in­ter­na­tion­al coun­ter­parts.

" Since the in­cep­tion of COVID-19, the na­tion­al Ten­nis Pro­gramme has been on halt due to the in­ac­ces­si­ble train­ing fa­cil­i­ties, putting us be­hind the oth­er coun­tries. There has been lit­tle to no in­vest­ment in sport in our coun­try, much less in ten­nis, to the point where play­ers have to pay their own air­fare to trav­el with the na­tion­al team," Mo­hammed said.

He added: " We are in a dif­fi­cult state as a re­sult of the pan­dem­ic. Nev­er­the­less, we are re­lent­less and hope to push through this dif­fi­cult sea­son. This is be­cause we have ath­letes who want to suc­ceed and are dili­gent to put in the work. They are how­ev­er at a dis­ad­van­tage and it must be not­ed that we can­not ex­pect as a na­tion to pro­duce in­ter­na­tion­al play­ers at Olympic and grand slam lev­els if we on­ly want to give novice con­tri­bu­tions.

We are al­ways so hap­py to sup­port our teams at the in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el but we do not want to sup­port them on the ground lev­el. We are hop­ing this can change."

Mo­hammed is cur­rent­ly in­to the semi­fi­nals of the Chetwynd End of Year Ten­nis Tour­na­ment af­ter de­feat­ing cham­pi­on Far­rah Chau­ti­lal at the week­end, hav­ing trav­elled from her home­town of Point Fortin to Tu­na­puna to be in­volved in her favourite sport.

That long jour­ney added to her rea­sons for the coun­try's set­backs in the sport, with play­ers hav­ing to trav­el long dis­tances to be in­volved in the ac­tion, while it's the to­tal op­po­site in coun­tries abroad: " COVID-19 has had a dev­as­tat­ing and desta­bil­is­ing im­pact on Ten­nis in T&T, re­gress­ing the per­for­mance of our ath­letes. Promis­ing ju­niors marked for the next lev­el were stunt­ed be­cause of closed train­ing fa­cil­i­ties."

" No lo­cal com­pe­ti­tions, lim­it­ed ac­cess to equip­ment and re­duced coach­ing time. On the oth­er hand, the play has con­tin­ued in the oth­er na­tions, which notes ten­nis as a non-con­tact sport and the fact that stay­ing out­doors and ex­er­cis­ing has proven health­i­er and a safer way of re­main­ing COVID-19 free."

"Our very own Na­tion­al Rac­quet Cen­ter is closed, where­by al­ter­na­tive lo­ca­tions could have been uti­lized to house COVID-19 pa­tients.

The Pub­lic Courts in Port of Spain re­main closed which is an­oth­er main lo­ca­tion for ten­nis in T&T, main­ly pri­vate clubs have been open for play which lim­its ac­cess to most play­ers. Just re­cent­ly our un­der-12 team trav­elled to the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic and the team had to jug­gle be­tween three dif­fer­ent lo­ca­tions for na­tion­al train­ing with­in two week­ends be­fore the pres­ti­gious events be­cause there was no lo­ca­tion for the team to train."