In this coun­try, those of us who un­der­stand what ones go through in the pur­suit of ex­cel­lence have a greater un­der­stand­ing and ap­pre­ci­a­tion for what their jour­ney en­tails.

I’ve said it be­fore and I’ll con­tin­ue to say it and some of you read­ing it would have ex­pe­ri­enced it first hand, in most in­stances, our achiev­ers are re­spect­ed, ap­pre­ci­at­ed and em­braced much more be­yond our shores than at home.

A good piece of ad­vice one can al­ways give to him­self is to ap­pre­ci­ate oth­er peo­ple and fo­cus on them. Putting oth­ers first in­creas­es the chances they’ll mea­sure up.

Two weeks ago dur­ing the T&T’s team stay in Chester for the in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly in Wales, it was heart­warm­ing to see the ap­pre­ci­a­tion and re­spect that for­mer na­tion­al play­er and cur­rent head coach Den­nis Lawrence still re­ceived from Wrex­ham staff and fans, some ten years or so af­ter leav­ing the club as a play­er. To hear for­mer Welsh and Liv­er­pool leg­end Joey Jones speak so pas­sion­ate­ly about the im­pact Lawrence, Car­los Ed­wards and Hec­tor Sam had at Wrex­ham would make true pa­tri­ots smile.

To see the re­ac­tion from fans to­wards Lawrence fol­low­ing the match against Wales and even to­wards Stern John who played pro­fes­sion­al­ly for clubs like Birm­ing­ham City, Sun­der­land and Not­ting­ham For­est to name a few and Mar­vin An­drews, was an in­di­ca­tion of how much of a pos­i­tive in­flu­ence they have had on the peo­ple and that their lega­cy there lives on. Scores of fa­thers were ea­ger to have their young sons pose with Lawrence and com­pa­ny for pho­tos or to have shirts signed by them. Sad­ly these lev­els of ac­knowl­edge­ment are lack­ing here at home.

“Wrex­ham and Trinidad and To­ba­go go back a long way in terms of the play­ers we’ve had here who have done well. We al­so had a lot of play­ers here. For many years, the Trinidad flag was fly­ing over at the stand there and that tells you the im­pact and re­spect there was for Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Jones said.

“I think any team would want play­ers like Den­nis, Car­los and Hec­tor Sam. They were bril­liant in the com­mu­ni­ty. I can still see Car­los now get the ball and just go climb­ing past the full back. Hec­tor was al­ways smil­ing and I hope he still is. And what a play­er and cap­tain Den­nis Lawrence was for this club. I can’t speak high­ly enough of them. The Wrex­ham fans loved the Trinidad boys,” said Jones who won the Eu­ro­pean Cup medal with Liv­er­pool in 1977.

When you see how high these per­son­al­i­ties are still re­gard­ed in places where foot­ball is so pop­u­lar which al­so means they are in a sense com­pet­ing for at­ten­tion with so many high achiev­ers in the sport, it makes you won­der how far off we are at home. Could we do more as sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions to use past he­roes as in­flu­encers for cur­rent day ath­letes? Every re­cruit and foot­baller at De­fence Force should be re­mind­ed con­tin­u­ous­ly of what Lawrence, Car­los Ed­wards and Ja­son Scot­land among oth­ers have gone on to achieve and how much their names are still re­spect­ed in for­eign ter­ri­to­ry.

Those who are com­pet­i­tive strive for ex­cel­lence by com­par­ing them­selves to oth­ers as a way of eval­u­at­ing their own skill lev­el. Whether it was a con­scious stand or un­in­ten­tion­al ad­vo­ca­cy, ath­letes and coach­es through­out the past cen­tu­ry used their par­tic­i­pa­tion in sports to change the at­mos­phere in some coun­tries and this ap­plies to Trinidad and To­ba­go as well. They should con­tin­ue to move our na­tion for­ward in­to a new way of think­ing, and with­out them, we may not en­joy the rel­a­tive equal­i­ty we ex­pe­ri­ence to­day. Such work was not easy, how­ev­er; these fig­ures such as our ath­letes, crick­eters and foot­ballers, in par­tic­u­lar, over­came count­less ob­sta­cles and un­der­went many chal­lenges to emerge as the re­spect­ed in­di­vid­u­als they are to­day es­pe­cial­ly in over­seas ter­ri­to­ries.

When you look at the achieve­ments of our ath­letes in Eu­rope and the Unit­ed States over the past three decades or so, from the Windies crick­eters in the 70s and 80s the UK to our ac­com­plished foot­ballers, you re­alise that not on­ly did these fig­ures be­gin to af­fect the mind­set in our coun­try and what­ev­er for­eign com­mu­ni­ty they were based in, but they al­so had an im­pact up­on their fel­low peo­ple. Be­cause they were will­ing to ex­pose them­selves to the harsh crit­i­cism and seg­re­ga­tion of the sports world, many of these ath­letes be­came hero­ic fig­ures that served as role mod­els for many.

Sport is a unique en­vi­ron­ment be­cause it cap­tures the at­ten­tion of near­ly the en­tire coun­try. Fur­ther­more, un­like tele­vi­sion and movies, the men and women that par­tic­i­pate in sports are not char­ac­ters or per­son­al­i­ties; the per­son seen on the court or the field is the same per­son off of it as well. In­deed, sports serves as a mi­cro­cosm for so­ci­ety, and we must con­tin­ue to recog­nise this even more and be able o use sports as a plat­form to ad­vo­cate so­cial change and equal­i­ty.

Ed­i­tor's Note: Shaun Fuentes is the head of TTFA Me­dia. He is a for­mer FI­FA Me­dia Of­fi­cer at the 2010 FI­FA World Cup in South Africa. He is al­so cur­rent­ly a CON­CA­CAF Com­pe­ti­tions Me­dia Of­fi­cer and has trav­elled ex­ten­sive­ly, ex­pe­ri­enc­ing and learn­ing from dif­fer­ent cul­tures and lifestyles be­cause of sport and me­dia over the past 20 years. He is al­so a cer­ti­fied me­dia train­er for ath­letes and a mem­ber of the FI­FA/CIES Sport Man­age­ment co­hort.