Cit­ing con­cerns about the trans­paren­cy, gov­er­nance, man­age­ment and lead­er­ship of the na­tion­al squash as­so­ci­a­tion, a group of mem­bers has re­quest­ed a spe­cial gen­er­al meet­ing to re­move the Squash T&T (SquashTT) board.

Ac­cord­ing to a let­ter to the di­rec­tors, dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 15, the re­quest was al­so mo­ti­vat­ed by an al­leged breach of fidu­cia­ry du­ty and fail­ure to com­ply with le­gal, reg­u­la­to­ry and safe­guard­ing poli­cies. The let­ter was signed by 14 mem­bers.

The board is now re­quired to con­vene the meet­ing three months from the mo­tion, De­cem­ber.

Ac­cord­ing to the board, in a re­sponse to Guardian Sport, all ques­tions will be tabled dur­ing an up­com­ing an­nu­al meet­ing.

It de­nied the al­le­ga­tions.

“Our ac­counts are au­dit­ed an­nu­al­ly. This is cur­rent­ly be­ing processed to pre­pare for the an­nu­al meet­ing,” pres­i­dent Di­ane Julien said.

The board cur­rent­ly con­sists of eight mem­bers: The pres­i­dent - Julien, Vergil Chat­ter­goon (vice pres­i­dent), Craig Be­har­ry (trea­sur­er), Pe­ter Pirtheesingh (sec­re­tary), Ramesh De­ok­iesingh, Shel­don Skeete and Faith Gillezeau.

Im­prop­er Di­rec­tor List­ing on Com­pa­ny Reg­istry

Last May, SquashTT’s board is­sued no­tice of change of di­rec­tors for the as­so­ci­a­tion’s reg­is­tered com­pa­ny.

Three of those named - Lisa Year­wood, God­frey Wei and Earl Wil­son - were not di­rec­tors and did not ap­prove their reg­is­tra­tion.

“At this time, I’m not a di­rec­tor, so I re­al­ly should not be list­ed as a di­rec­tor,” Wei told Guardian Sport.

“Not at all. The mem­ber­ship vot­ed in a new board at the AGM (an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing) in No­vem­ber 2024. All ex­ist­ing di­rec­tors ex­cept for Ramesh De­ok­iesingh, Di­anne Julien and Pe­ter Pirtheesingh were re-elect­ed. A new board was vot­ed in at the AGM. Hence, the rea­son my res­ig­na­tion was not nec­es­sary,” Year­wood said.

Wil­son re­signed as a di­rec­tor in De­cem­ber 2023.

“The board is not op­er­at­ing at the lev­el of pro­fes­sion­al­ism that I ex­pect­ed, and I can no longer serve as a board mem­ber. Please re­move my name from SquashTT let­ter­head, all so­cial me­dia and all fu­ture doc­u­men­ta­tion,” he wrote.

Ac­cord­ing to the Com­pa­nies Act, it is a pos­si­ble crim­i­nal of­fence to know­ing­ly reg­is­ter in­cor­rect in­for­ma­tion.

In re­sponse, SquashTT pres­i­dent Julien said the change of di­rec­tors was re­quest­ed on No­vem­ber 8, 2024 - a day af­ter the elec­tion.

“It took much longer than we an­tic­i­pat­ed, as the firm we hired faced chal­lenges. This has been re­solved,” Julien said.

Un­ad­dressed com­plaints in­volv­ing mi­nors

In June, board mem­ber Faith Gillezeau wrote to the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC), com­plain­ing of im­prop­er con­duct by a se­nior play­er dur­ing the 2024 Caribbean Squash Cham­pi­onships in Guyana.

“1. Vul­gar Di­a­logue in the pres­ence of mi­nors: I have per­son­al­ly in­ter­vened in in­stances dur­ing CASA 2024 where com­ments of an in­her­ent­ly sex­u­al na­ture were made in the pres­ence of mi­nors…To em­pha­sise my point, in one in­stance, lewd com­ments re­gard­ing the phys­i­cal at­trib­ut­es of a fe­male mi­nor and what his per­son­al in­ten­tions would be giv­en those at­trib­ut­es were made loud­ly among the pas­sen­gers of an ath­lete bus re­turn­ing to the ho­tel. Those com­ments were made di­rect­ly to ju­nior mem­bers of the T&T team and oth­er pas­sen­gers.

2. Un­sports­man­like Be­hav­iour: (in­di­vid­ual named) has been ob­served by many mem­bers of the squash com­mu­ni­ty en­gag­ing in un­sports­man­like ac­tiv­i­ty at both na­tion­al and Caribbean tour­na­ments. These ac­tions in­clude but are not lim­it­ed to ver­bal­ly abus­ing the ref­er­ee, throw­ing his rack­et and body at in­ter­vals, scream­ing loud­ly and serv­ing as a hin­drance to both the match and op­po­nent at hand,” she wrote.

In re­sponse, Julien said its re­port was sent to the Safe Sport Com­mis­sion.

“We as­signed a dis­ci­pli­nary com­mit­tee to in­ves­ti­gate. The find­ings were sent to all par­ties and the Safe Sport Com­mis­sion. The case was deemed closed.”

Al­so in June, na­tion­al ju­nior head coach Ryan Jages­sar no­ti­fied the board of its fail­ure to ad­here to stan­dard child pro­tec­tion poli­cies for the Ju­nior CASA tour­na­ment.

Af­ter hear­ing of the pro­posed arrange­ment, the chair­man of the TTOC’s Safe Sport Com­mis­sion, Mark Mun­gal, sent an email to SquashTT pres­i­dent Julien ad­vis­ing her that the TTOC does not rec­om­mend that coach­es or oth­er tech­ni­cal staff share rooms with ju­nior ath­letes.

Julien, in re­sponse to Guardian Sport ques­tions, said that the board has been main­tain­ing the pol­i­cy of avoid­ing hav­ing coach­es room with mi­nors, as best pos­si­ble.

Man­age­ment Con­cerns

Ac­cord­ing to the writ­ten re­quest for a spe­cial gen­er­al meet­ing, “SquashTT is in­debt­ed to coach­es and man­agers col­lec­tive­ly in the sum of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $90,000 for: re­im­burse­ment for train­ing (since 2023); salaries for Ju­ly, Au­gust 2025; re­im­burse­ment for ac­com­mo­da­tion for Ju­nior CASA; and re­im­burse­ment for air­fare/ac­com­mo­da­tion for Ju­nior CASA.”

In re­sponse, SquashTT said the out­stand­ing fig­ure in­cludes a debt from 2023 for the pay­ment of the lev­el 3 cer­ti­fi­ca­tions in Eu­rope for a coach, in­clud­ing ac­com­mo­da­tion/flights and course fees.

“Staff are owed funds from over­seas tours (in June/Ju­ly, Ju­nior 2025 CASA ac­com­mo­da­tion, and 2025 Se­nior Pan Amer­i­can Games in Brazil in Au­gust). We have planned ac­tiv­i­ties and are work­ing close­ly with key stake­hold­ers to com­plete pay­ment,” Julien told Guardian Sport.

More re­cent­ly, in June, the na­tion­al youth teams' two coach­es, head coach Jages­sar and as­sis­tant coach Rhea Khan, were in­formed two days be­fore de­part­ing for the Ju­nior Squash Cham­pi­onships that they would have to pay $19,000 for ac­com­mo­da­tion.

“The re­quest is, in my view, un­rea­son­able, un­fair, un­just and places a dis­pro­por­tion­ate bur­den on me. First­ly, I re­fer to the ad­ver­tise­ment for the po­si­tion of head coach that I ap­plied for. Nowhere in the ad­ver­tise­ment does it state that it is a re­quire­ment that the head coach must pay for ac­com­mo­da­tion costs. Sec­ond­ly, this will be the 17th time be­ing head coach of a team go­ing to CASA and nev­er have I been told that I had to pay for my own ac­com­mo­da­tion,” the cer­ti­fied World Squash Fed­er­a­tion coach wrote.

Khan al­so wrote to ex­press her con­cerns.

“Just a day and a half be­fore we are due to trav­el to coach the ju­nior na­tion­al team, we have been in­formed that we are re­spon­si­ble for cov­er­ing our own ac­com­mo­da­tions in both Mi­a­mi and the Cay­man Is­lands. We have al­so been told that the like­li­hood of re­im­burse­ment is very low.”

Jages­sar, de­ter­mined not to let his stu­dents down, stayed with a friend dur­ing the tour­na­ment, while Khan roomed with a ju­nior play­er.

Poor Tour­na­ment Prepa­ra­tion

Na­tion­al team se­lec­tion and tour­na­ment prepa­ra­tion have been im­pact­ed by a lack of prepa­ra­tion and poor com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

Guardian Sport un­der­stands that the se­nior na­tion­al team has not trained since 2020.

Mean­while, a lack of prepa­ra­tion for the Pan Amer­i­can Squash Cham­pi­onship in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in Au­gust re­sult­ed in play­ers drop­ping out.

From as ear­ly as Feb­ru­ary, play­ers and coach­es wrote to the board.

“The ques­tions yet to be an­swered are as fol­lows:

Is SquashTT plan­ning to send teams to the Se­nior Pan-Am in Au­gust and Se­nior CASA in No­vem­ber this year?

If yes to send­ing teams to events list­ed above, when do they plan to reach out to the play­ers to see who is in­ter­est­ed and avail­able to par­tic­i­pate? This is im­por­tant as play­ers would need suf­fi­cient time to train to per­form their best at these events. Play­ers would al­so need time to ap­ply for va­ca­tion from their jobs and time to seek spon­sor­ship.

What fundrais­ers are SquashTT plan­ning to have for the se­nior team this year?

When does SquashTT plan to have a meet­ing with the se­nior play­ers of T&T to dis­cuss these items? We are more than halfway through the third month of the year with no en­gage­ment with the se­nior squash com­mu­ni­ty for 2025,” Jages­sar wrote to Julien in March.

Na­tion­al play­er Joel Au­gus­tine wrote in June.

“With the tour­na­ment less than 10 weeks away, and ath­letes like my­self ac­tive­ly seek­ing spon­sor­ship, we ur­gent­ly need: con­firmed se­lec­tion cri­te­ria and time­li­ness; cost break­downs and dead­lines; and for­mal let­ters of in­tent or con­sid­er­a­tion to sup­port fund­ing ef­forts…We’re ex­pect­ed to be ready, fund­ed, and com­pet­i­tive on short no­tice, with­out the ba­sic tools to plan ac­cord­ing­ly,” he wrote.

With no an­swers, he wrote fol­low-up emails in May and June.

Women’s play­er Tes­sa Mar­tin-Hunt­ley ex­pressed her frus­tra­tion in Ju­ly.

“We are now just six weeks away from the tour­na­ment, and once again, play­ers are be­ing asked to scram­ble at the last minute to or­gan­ise trav­el, with no con­fir­ma­tion of who has ac­tu­al­ly been se­lect­ed to com­pete. It is deeply con­cern­ing that, de­spite ask­ing for ex­pres­sions of in­ter­est in May, the T&T Squash As­so­ci­a­tion (SquashTT) has yet to for­mal­ly an­nounce the team or pro­vide any sub­stan­tial in­for­ma­tion.

“Even more trou­bling, due to the com­mit­tee’s con­tin­ued lack of plan­ning, is the re­quest for play­ers to cov­er their own air­fare to Rio De Janeiro - a sig­nif­i­cant fi­nan­cial bur­den, es­pe­cial­ly with such short no­tice,” she wrote.

On Ju­ly 12, six weeks be­fore the tour­na­ment’s start date, the board an­nounced a 10-per­son team to trav­el to Rio.

The email stat­ed, “Ac­com­mo­da­tion is pro­vid­ed, but ath­letes and the tech­ni­cal team must self-fund oth­er ex­pens­es (Flights and meals).”

Three days lat­er, Mar­tin-Hunt­ley with­drew.

“It’s deeply dis­ap­point­ing to step away from an op­por­tu­ni­ty to rep­re­sent T&T, but I hope this high­lights the re­al im­pact that poor com­mu­ni­ca­tion and last-minute plan­ning have on ath­letes who re­main com­mit­ted to both their sport and their per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ties,” she wrote.

Male play­er Paul De­v­ertueil al­so with­drew.

Sev­en play­ers went to the cham­pi­onship.

As a re­sult of the late com­mu­ni­ca­tion, each play­er paid ap­prox­i­mate­ly $4,000 to $6,000 ex­tra for their tick­ets.

In re­sponse, SquashTT said it has been work­ing to im­prove its chan­nels of com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

“We are com­mit­ted to ex­pand­ing our net­work to en­sure that we re­ceive time­ly in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing events, which has been chal­leng­ing for us in the past.”