At­tor­ney-at-Law Roger St Rose of Malvern Sports Club was elect­ed as the new pres­i­dent of the T&T Hock­ey Board (T&THB) at its 24th An­nu­al Coun­cil Meet­ing (ACM) held on Tues­day, No­vem­ber 30 via the Zoom Video-Con­fer­enc­ing ap­pli­ca­tion.

St Rose, the first um­pire from T&T to of­fi­ci­ate at the Olympics in 1996 At­lanta Games and the FIH World Cup was the im­me­di­ate past First Vice-Pres­i­dent of the T&THB and was elect­ed un­op­posed to the po­si­tion af­ter in­cum­bent Dou­glas Ca­ma­cho of Notre Dame did not seek re-elec­tion and will now serve a two-year term.

St Rose is cur­rent­ly a mem­ber of the Of­fi­cials Com­mit­tee of the Fed­er­a­tion of In­ter­na­tion­al Hock­ey (FIH) and the Um­pires Com­mit­tee of the Pan Amer­i­can Hock­ey Fed­er­a­tion (PAHF).

The oth­er ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers who were all elect­ed un­op­posed were Jen­nifer Lan­der, Lisa Her­nan­dez, Gomes and Lucy Lee to re­place mem­bers whose two-year term ends in 2021.

The quar­tet of Lan­der of Ven­tures Hock­ey Club (Sec­ond Vice-Pres­i­dent), Malvern’s Her­nan­dez (Third Vice-Pres­i­dent), Fa­ti­ma’s Gomes (Trea­sur­er) and Mag­no­lias’ Lee (As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary) were all re­tained in their po­si­tions.

The quin­tet joins Cindy Mar­tin-Faustin (As­sis­tant Trea­sur­er), Reyah Richard­son (Hon­orary Sec­re­tary), and Elect­ed Mem­bers Garth Bap­tiste and Ayan­na Mc Lean, who will com­plete their two-year terms (2020-2022) next year while the First Vice-Pres­i­dent left va­cant by Rose is yet to be filled.

Reached for com­ment on the elec­tions, Richard­son who al­so rep­re­sent­ed T&T at the Olympic Games as a Tech­ni­cal Com­mit­tee of­fi­cial said the AGM went well with nine to ten of the 15 clubs as­so­ci­at­ed with the board be­ing present.

She said, “We have good par­tic­i­pa­tion from the mem­ber clubs, and the elec­tions went smooth­ly.

Look­ing ahead to the chal­lenges, Richard­son, a for­mer na­tion­al hock­ey play­er ad­mit­ted that team sports do­mes­ti­cal­ly has been at a stand­still for the last 18 months go­ing on two years, and this new ex­ec­u­tive will have a good bit of work to do be­cause we know go­ing in­to re­cov­ery mode.

She said, “Once sports is open or once team sports do­mes­ti­cal­ly has open, we will now have to at­tract and en­gage per­sons to come back in­to the sport.

“We have to look at youth in sports once Un­der-18s are al­lowed to par­tic­i­pate in sport, we have to now get them back in­to this sport be­cause we have to look at the longevi­ty of the sport and the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the sport at this point and we have to look at pop­u­lat­ing our na­tion­al teams.

“So the main thing re­al­ly and tru­ly will be to fo­cus on do­mes­tic com­pe­ti­tion and de­vel­op­ment.

“Those will be the two key roles of this new ex­ec­u­tive, do­mes­tic com­pe­ti­tion and hav­ing our peo­ple play hock­ey and de­vel­op­ment, get­ting the young ones back in­volved and al­so get­ting the sport back in­to the main­stream me­dia and al­so hav­ing a strong so­cial me­dia pres­ence.”

Cur­rent­ly, the Na­tion­al Hock­ey Cen­tre in Tacarigua is not is used by the T&THB as the Na­tion­al Rack­et Cen­tre which is on the same com­pound is be­ing used by the Min­istry of Health as a Step-down fa­cil­i­ty in the fight against the coro­n­avirus.

In ad­di­tion to that, the NHC as­tro­turf sur­face is still to be ful­ly re­paired with the top sur­face need­ing to be re­layed.

With that in mind, Richard­son said the T&THB do have some chal­lenges of not hav­ing a home for hock­ey at this time as some work is go­ing on.

“The ac­tiv­i­ty (re­pairs) could not con­tin­ue or could not oc­cur ear­li­er, in the end, this year be­cause of the pan­dem­ic, and be­cause of trav­el re­stric­tions that even the ven­dor who comes from Poly­tan in Chile, the re­stric­tions that they had in terms of move­ment of their peo­ple transna­tion­al­ly.

“So the ef­fort will be get­ting that home for home hock­ey back on track in terms of the work that has to be done on the sur­face.

While the T&THB awaits re­pair works to be done at Tacarigua she not­ed that the board does have oth­er sur­faces that they can use.

She added, “We can look at like the grass sur­face of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice fa­cil­i­ty which is cur­rent­ly in use by our na­tion­al team in train­ing.

“So we will want to en­gage and look at those fa­cil­i­ties but the main thing will be mak­ing the do­mes­tic com­pe­ti­tion avail­able, and hav­ing it done.

In terms of get­ting the Na­tion­al Hock­ey Cen­tre in Tacarigua ready, Richard­son said that work is be­ing spear­head­ed by the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T (SporTT).

They are the ex­e­cut­ing body and we take their lead from them. We've been in com­mu­ni­ca­tion and con­tact fre­quent­ly on that mat­ter and they are al­so now and have been in con­tact with the for­eign ven­dor on this mat­ter.”

The new T&THB ex­ec­u­tive:

Pres­i­dent: Roger St. Rose (Malvern Sports Club) – un­op­posed (2021-2023)

First Vice-Pres­i­dent: va­cant (2020-2022)

Sec­ond Vice-Pres­i­dent: Jen­nifer Lan­der (Ven­tures Hock­ey Club)- un­op­posed (2021-2023)

Third Vice-Pres­i­dent: Lisa Her­nan­dez (Malvern Sports Club) – un­op­posed Hon­orary - (2021-2023)

Elect­ed Mem­ber: Garth Bap­tiste (Notre Dame), Ayan­na Mc Clean (Ven­tures) - (2020-2022)

Trea­sur­er - Roger Gomes (Fa­ti­ma Club) – un­op­posed – (2021-2023)

As­sis­tant Trea­sur­er: Cindy Mar­tin-Faustin (Paragon) - (2020-22)

As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary: Lucy Lee (Mag­no­lia Hock­ey Club) – un­op­posed – (2021-2023)