Over the past decades, many men and women have flown the sports flag of San­gre Grande with pride and ho­n­our in var­i­ous dis­ci­plines. To­day, Guardian Me­dia’s Sports Desk fea­tures Team Elite, a San­gre Grande-based club that teach­es mar­tial arts in its ef­forts to mould not on­ly ex­em­plars of San­gre Grande but of T&T.

On Tues­day, we fea­tured na­tion­al net­ball and bas­ket­ball play­er Rhon­da John-Davis, a proud daugh­ter of San­gre Grande.

Sports Ed­i­tor Kei­th Clement chat­ted with Sen­si Bar­ry Win­ter of Team Elite about the role and pur­pose of his club in his na­tive San­gre Grande.

Q. If one asks who is Sen­sei Bar­ry Win­ter, how would you de­scribe your­self to the peo­ple of San­gre Grande?

A. Well, all the adults and my peers call me sen­sei, karate man, nin­ja, Samo, but now the kids call me Kung­fu Pan­da so I think that name stuck; we do have sim­i­lar char­ac­ter­is­tics and we both love mar­tial arts.

Q. What in­spired you to open a do­jo in San­gre Grande?

A. As long as I can re­mem­ber, I have al­ways want­ed to teach my ex­pres­sion of mar­tial arts and af­ter many years of suc­cess com­pet­ing lo­cal­ly, re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, my tran­si­tion from ath­lete to coach was nat­ur­al for me. I want­ed to pro­vide the youths of my com­mu­ni­ty of San­gre Grande with the same op­por­tu­ni­ties that I ben­e­fit­ed from be­cause of mar­tial arts.

Q. What makes you proud to be a na­tive of San­gre Grande?

A. San­gre Grande is the best place to live in T&T… where else could you walk down the road and every­body knows every­body. The sense of com­mu­ni­ty spir­it is still strong and peo­ple look out for each oth­er. The chil­dren from San­gre Grande that I have en­coun­tered are ex­treme­ly hard­work­ing and nev­er give up. When we go out to com­pe­ti­tion, peo­ple know that we are San­gre Grande-based team. We are al­ways on time, we are the first to be there even though we are trav­el­ling from the fur­thest lo­ca­tion and we dis­play true sports­man­ship. Of course, we are known for our rep­u­ta­tion for win­ning.

Q. From your teenage years to now, how would you de­scribe the de­vel­op­ment of sports in San­gre Grande and what is need­ed now?

A. I could on­ly de­scribe my ex­pe­ri­ence with re­gards to mar­tial arts. In my teenage years, there wasn’t any struc­ture in place for my sport in my area with re­gards to de­vel­op­ment; any­thing close to clin­ics or com­pe­ti­tions would be held in dif­fer­ent venues out­side of San­gre Grande.

To­day, I am pleased to say that my­self and Sen­sei Lena have cre­at­ed our own struc­tures to de­vel­op our club ath­letes. Our struc­ture al­so in­cludes stu­dents from pre-schools, pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools and tra­vers­es from To­co to Biche. We are very pleased with the suc­cess which we are achiev­ing to date, as our club ath­letes have won medals at na­tion­al, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tions.

We are al­so grate­ful for the sup­port of our par­ents, schools and com­mu­ni­ty who have em­braced our mar­tial arts pro­gramme. What def­i­nite­ly hasn't im­proved is the lack of fi­nan­cial sup­port, noth­ing is giv­en to host work­shops and to sup­port com­pe­ti­tions. This is es­sen­tial for the long-term de­vel­op­ment of our ath­letes.

I have seen first­hand how ath­letes who had the po­ten­tial to be re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al medal­ists lose the op­por­tu­ni­ty due to fi­nan­cial con­straints.

Q. How has your do­jo cre­at­ed an av­enue for young peo­ple to de­vel­op their char­ac­ter?

A. At Team Elite Karate, we are a fam­i­ly. We all come full cir­cle and we all add val­ue to each oth­er’s pur­pose. With that type of ecosys­tem, our ath­letes get that sense of be­long­ing and feel­ing of ap­pre­ci­a­tion that con­tributes to­wards both their men­tal and phys­i­cal de­vel­op­ment. The stu­dents al­so have an av­enue to ex­press some of the chal­lenges they deal with, whether at home or school.

They learn how to work to­geth­er as a team and help each oth­er im­prove and work hard­er. They al­so learn how to re­spect judges and ref­er­ees even though they don’t al­ways agree with the de­ci­sions. The stu­dents learn a lot about them­selves in­di­vid­u­al­ly, es­pe­cial­ly in the tougher ses­sions where some of them achieve things they nev­er thought they could have. 'Sen­sei, I can’t do that roll you know,' and then they sur­prise them­selves. It re­al­ly helps to im­prove their self-es­teem. We strive to keep it sim­ple and pos­i­tive.

Q. What are some of the op­por­tu­ni­ties the do­jo pro­vides for its ath­letes?

A. Team Elite Karate is very ac­tive in the com­pe­ti­tion cir­cuit. We pro­vide op­por­tu­ni­ties for our club ath­letes to par­tic­i­pate in both con­tem­po­rary and tra­di­tion­al karate cham­pi­onships. Our in­ter-school pro­gramme has al­lowed us to un­earth new tal­ent from through­out our com­mu­ni­ty. Now we have mem­bers on the na­tion­al team win­ning medals for Trinidad and To­ba­go. By work­ing in pre-schools all the way to sec­ondary schools, we have stu­dents as young as four years and adults in their thir­ties. We al­so have lo­ca­tions in To­co and Biche to al­low ac­cess for stu­dents who would have not been able to come to San­gre Grande.

Q. What makes your do­jo dif­fer­ent from oth­ers?

A. Hon­est­ly, there are so many el­e­ments that cre­ate this unique or­gan­ism. One of the most im­por­tant fac­tors though, is that we get to know each of our ath­letes per­son­al­ly. We know how to work with our pre-school­ers dif­fer­ent­ly from adults and how to cus­tomise train­ing based on life cir­cum­stances. Se­nior ranks train ju­nior ranks and get ex­pe­ri­ence be­ing lead­ers. The stu­dents learn to get over the fear of fail­ure and keep per­se­ver­ing. To sum it up…. Sen­sei Lena and Sen­sei Bar­ry.

Q. What would you like to see as an im­prove­ment in sports in San­gre Grande?

A. I would like to see ath­letes and coach­es re­ceive recog­ni­tion for their suc­cess and ser­vices. At least once a year, let's have an awards cer­e­mo­ny for the peo­ple of the San­gre Grande com­mu­ni­ty. This is one way of en­cour­ag­ing more par­tic­i­pa­tion in sport; the younger ath­letes will be en­cour­aged to work hard­er. It would al­so be nice to have stronger in­volve­ment of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to sup­port ath­letes com­pet­ing at re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al lev­els.

Q. What would you do dif­fer­ent to­day to cor­rect an act you look back on be­cause you did not han­dle it well?

A. In my com­pet­ing days I won a lot of mar­tial arts com­pe­ti­tions - Bat­tle of At­lanta, Bat­tle of Eng­land, Eng­lish Open just to name a few. How­ev­er, be­ing the com­peti­tor to beat meant that some of the oth­er ath­letes didn't like los­ing to me and they still re­mind me of it to­day. Some of them are se­nior of­fi­cials and judges in the sport to­day and our per­son­al com­pet­i­tive­ness some­times af­fects com­pe­ti­tions for my stu­dents.

Look­ing back on it, I feel I could have been more gra­cious and prob­a­bly tak­en the guys out for lunch af­ter com­pe­ti­tions. Peace and love.

Q. What as­pect of your life do you cher­ish most?

A. More than ever be­fore fam­i­ly time.

Q. Your gen­er­al com­ments.

A. Mar­tial arts is not just about fight­ing and win­ning com­pe­ti­tions. It builds the whole in­di­vid­ual men­tal­ly and phys­i­cal­ly. It teach­es how to win and how to lose, how to be in­jured and how to build your­self back up again. It’s the rea­son why every day I feel priv­i­leged to get up and do what I was born to do.