Fol­low­ing the in­ter­ven­tion of the Min­is­ter of Sport and Youth Af­fairs, Phillip Watts, the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ics Ad­min­is­tra­tions of T&T (NAAATT) has se­cured the fi­nan­cial sup­port en­abling it to field rep­re­sen­ta­tion at the North Amer­i­can, Cen­tral Amer­i­can, and Caribbean (NACAC) Un­der-18 and U-23 Cham­pi­onships to be held in Tlax­cala, Mex­i­co, from Ju­ly 10-12.

​The an­nounce­ment was made in a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day and con­firmed by NAAATT pres­i­dent Ephraim Ser­rette when he ap­peared on CNC3’s Morn­ing Shot pro­gramme host­ed by Ian Wa­son yes­ter­day morn­ing.

​Ser­rette said, “I would like to thank the min­is­ter for his de­ci­sive in­ter­ven­tion to en­sure the team’s par­tic­i­pa­tion at the U-18 and U-23 cham­pi­onships. I think his time­ly ac­tion re­al­ly res­cued what was be­com­ing an ex­treme­ly un­for­tu­nate sit­u­a­tion for our young ath­letes, coach­es and of­fi­cials.”

This lat­est de­vel­op­ment ef­fec­tive­ly re­vers­es the NAAATT’s ear­li­er de­ci­sion to with­draw from the games due to what it called an “un­cer­tain­ty” in fund­ing from the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T (SporTT).

​The with­draw­al was com­mu­ni­cat­ed by the NAAATT in a let­ter ad­dressed to “all af­fil­i­at­ed clubs, ath­letes, coach­es and mem­bers” on Wednes­day.

​In Wednes­day’s let­ter, the NAAATT ex­plained that “the fund­ing re­quired to fa­cil­i­tate the team’s par­tic­i­pa­tion could not be se­cured.” It went on to state that this was de­spite the As­so­ci­a­tion be­ing able to ful­fil its re­spon­si­bil­i­ties in ac­cor­dance with the es­tab­lished pro­ce­dures and tak­ing all nec­es­sary steps to fa­cil­i­tate a favourable out­come, “which is par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Cham­pi­onships.”

​The let­ter al­so said that al­though the NAAATT board had ap­proved the se­lec­tion of a team, with the fi­nal­i­sa­tion of trav­el and lo­gis­ti­cal arrange­ments con­tin­gent up­on con­fir­ma­tion of the re­quired fund­ing, no re­sponse had been forth­com­ing from SporTT de­spite nu­mer­ous at­tempts to ob­tain up­dates, in­clud­ing through the min­is­ter him­self at last month’s Na­tion­al Cham­pi­onships.

The NAAATT claimed it had missed the ini­tial NACAC dead­line to in­di­cate par­tic­i­pa­tion in the cham­pi­onships, as well as sev­er­al ex­ten­sions, be­fore be­ing forced to pull the plug.

​How­ev­er, in re­lay­ing grat­i­tude to Min­is­ter Watts, Ser­rette could not hide his dis­ap­point­ment in SporTT’s han­dling of the mat­ter.

“To date, we have not re­ceived any com­mu­ni­ca­tion from SporTT with re­spect to what was the sit­u­a­tion with the fund­ing. Na­tion­al gov­ern­ing bod­ies should not be placed in this kind of sit­u­a­tion where ath­letes risk miss­ing out on rep­re­sent­ing their coun­try. That ap­par­ent in­abil­i­ty, I should say, to process and com­mu­ni­cate de­ci­sions on fund­ing ap­pli­ca­tions sub­mit­ted, es­pe­cial­ly when it is done in ac­cor­dance with their pol­i­cy, rais­es a se­ri­ous ques­tion re­gard­ing to the ef­fec­tive­ness and the com­pe­tence of their cur­rent sys­tem.

“I think what may be re­quired is that the min­is­ter him­self or some­body in au­thor­i­ty needs to con­duct a thor­ough re­view of the gov­er­nance, de­ci­sion-mak­ing process­es, and op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cies of the SporTT board and the whole ad­min­is­tra­tive process.”

Yes­ter­day’s in­ter­ven­tion by Watts clears the way for a team of 31 ath­letes and of­fi­cials to de­part Trinidad on Wednes­day, head­ed for Mex­i­co. Ser­rette in­di­cat­ed that the team is sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duced from the orig­i­nal fig­ure of 52 ath­letes and of­fi­cials. Ser­rette told Guardian Me­dia Sport that the NAAATT board was left with no choice but to re­duce the size of the con­tin­gent as a re­sult of be­ing un­able to ob­tain the lev­el of fund­ing it had orig­i­nal­ly ap­plied for and an­tic­i­pat­ed from SporTT.

As a re­sult, ath­letes who had al­so at­tained the World Ath­let­ics U-20 Cham­pi­onships stan­dards were with­held from the NACAC team in favour of them be­ing se­lect­ed for the World Cham­pi­onships in Ore­gon, Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, from Au­gust 5-9.

“We would have catered for a cer­tain num­ber of ath­letes be­cause this meet was orig­i­nal­ly just for the U-18s and the U-23s, but NACAC added the U-20s, which took our team size over the ex­pect­ed one. The board made a de­ci­sion to re­move the ath­letes who would be se­lect­ed to go to worlds and give the oth­er peo­ple the op­por­tu­ni­ty to com­pete.”

Ser­rette stat­ed that in re­solv­ing the NACAC trip, he was giv­en a com­mit­ment by the min­is­ter for fund­ing for the World U-20 Cham­pi­onships as well.

T&T team

U-18 Boys

Al­fred Pierre (Abi­lene Wild­cats) 400m, 4x400; Ay­dan David­son (Burn­ley) 100m, 4×100m; Brion Scott (Pace and Per­for­mance) 800m, 4×400m; Christo­pher Sam­my (Pace and Per­for­mance) 800m, 3000m; Jaa­fari Shaw (RSS Phoenix) dis­cus; J’Quan Dou­glas (Zenith) 200m, 4×100m; Ka­mari Di­az (Sim­plex) 200m, 4×100m; Khor­dae Lewis (Pace and Per­for­mance) 4×400m; Khordel Lewis (Pace and Per­for­mance) 400m, 4×400m; Mekhi Guis­chard-Year­wood (Point Fortin New Jets) 100m, 4×100m; Michal Paul (Con­corde) Long Jump, 4×100m, 4×400m.

U-18 Girls

Dai­ja Reid (Zenith) hep­tathlon; Eden Chee Wah (Mem­phis Pi­o­neers) 200m, 400m, 4×400m; Jael Pe­ters (Burn­ley) 100m, 200m; La Queen Welch (QRC) hep­tathlon; Ny­la Kerr (Pace and Per­for­mance) 800m, 1,500m, 4×400m; Soleil Caruth (Con­corde) 400m, 4×400m.

U-23 Men

Aaron Charles (Un­at­tached) 100m, 200m; Cheyne West (Abi­lene Wild­cats) 400m hur­dles; Do­ri­an Charles (Point Fortin New Jets) Javelin; Jay­den Maxwell (Con­corde) Triple Jump; Le­Bron James (To­ba­go Fal­cons) Javelin; Rev­ell Web­ster (Con­corde) 100m; Ta­fari Wal­dron (UTT) 1,500m, 5,000m.

U-23 Women

Ani­quah Bai­ley (Pace and Per­for­mance) 1,500m; Gi­an­na Paul (Con­corde) 100m hur­dles, long jump; Han­nah Reid (Phoenix) 400m, Janae De Gannes (Con­corde) long jump; Keneisha Shel­bourne (Oa­sis) triple jump; Lalenii Grant (Mer­cury) dis­cus; Tenique Vin­cent (Con­corde) hep­taht­lon.