The ab­sence of a Sport Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (SPORTT) Board of Di­rec­tors has left sev­er­al key na­tion­al sport­ing con­cerns un­done; how­ev­er, Min­is­ter of Sport and Youth Af­fairs, Phillip Watts does not see this as a ma­jor is­sue.

With­in three days of the 2025 Gen­er­al Elec­tion on April 28, sev­en SPORTT board mem­bers, in­clud­ing Chair­man Lar­ry Ro­many, Hei­di East­man, Jef­frey Guillen, Es­ter Bur­rowes, At­ti­ba Ifill, Mar­vin An­drews, and Al­i­son Hall va­cat­ed their posts. At that time, a SPORTT of­fi­cial as­sured a new board would be ap­point­ed ‘soon’.

Al­most four months af­ter, the Min­istry of Sport’s ex­ec­u­tive arm that is re­spon­si­ble for 15 sport­ing dis­ci­plines re­mains with­out an eight-mem­ber board.

“Rec­om­men­da­tions would have been made,” Min­is­ter Watts re­vealed in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia Sports on Fri­day, “We await, but we should have some­thing in place by next week, re­mem­ber the gov­ern­ment is try­ing to fill all the boards. They will start with the big­ger boards like Her­itage (Pe­tro­le­um) as you would have seen, the A-Class boards first, and we’re com­ing down the road, but every week they are rolling out boards, they will get to our board, but in the in­ter­im the board is not re­al­ly af­fect­ing op­er­a­tions in the Min­istry.”

Last week, the Ten­nis As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TATT) can­celled 11 of its 13 tour­na­ments, which com­prise the an­nu­al ‘Sum­mer of Ten­nis’ pro­gramme.

In a re­lease, TATT said this meant re­duced com­pet­i­tive op­por­tu­ni­ties for lo­cal and re­gion­al ath­letes who would come to ex­pect the tour­na­ment ros­ter for the past five years as well as knock-on ef­fects for the de­vel­op­ment of ju­nior ath­letes, play­er rank­ings and um­pire ac­cred­i­ta­tion.

The T&T Hock­ey Board (TTHB) failed to field Men’s and Women’s se­nior teams at the on­go­ing Pan Amer­i­can Hock­ey Cups, pulling out of both tour­na­ments which serve as qual­i­fiers for the 2026 FIH Hock­ey World Cups in Bel­gium.

TTHB Pres­i­dent Willard Har­ris not­ed that T&T’s abrupt with­draw­al will in­cur rep­u­ta­tion­al dam­age and fi­nan­cial penal­ties from the Pan Amer­i­can Hock­ey Fed­er­a­tion (PAHF) and Pan Am Cup broad­cast­ers ES­PN.

T&T’s teams have not been re­placed at the Oan Am Cups and will be record­ed as hav­ing for­feit­ed their match­es, los­ing each by a 5-0 mar­gin.

The 2025 Youth Sport Camps, an an­nu­al fa­cil­i­ty pro­vid­ed by the SPORTT com­pa­ny to en­gage the na­tion’s youth have al­so been mixed for the first time since a re­turn to play af­ter the pan­dem­ic.

SPORTT CEO, Ja­son Williams, says or­gan­is­ers sim­ply ran out of time to re­search and ex­e­cute the camps, which pro­vide va­ca­tion ac­tiv­i­ties for chil­dren be­tween ages sev­en and 17 at 43 in­door and out­door lo­ca­tions na­tion­wide.

“The Youth Sport Camps, Williams ex­plained on Fri­day, “be­cause of all the process for ap­proval, we would not have been able to get that sort­ed out in time to en­gage coach­es and co­or­di­na­tors and all those things, and of course bud­get as well.”

Asked if it was a con­se­quence of the chang­ing gov­ern­ment Williams said “Of course you would have lost the con­ti­nu­ity there, and then new gov­ern­ment comes in place, you have to wait on a new min­is­ter to come in place, we still don’t have a board as yet so that is a big part as well too.”

Williams says while the al­lo­ca­tions have been made there’s no stand­ing pro­vi­sion for fund­ing, but rather, ap­pli­ca­tions for fund­ing have to be made on a case-by-case ba­sis, be­gin­ning from scratch each year.

He says in the in­ter­im, pre-ex­ist­ing pro­grammes will con­tin­ue.

The Ja­va Com­mu­ni­ty Crick­et pro­gramme, de­scribed by Williams as Watts brain­child at its launch, is on­go­ing at 47 Grounds across Trinidad and To­ba­go and will end on Au­gust 28.