The T&T Ten­nis As­so­ci­a­tion has hit a ma­jor mark in the sport's de­vel­op­ment.

The sport, be­ing man­aged by Hay­den Mitchell, was award­ed the Bronze Lev­el Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of its Coach­es Ed­u­ca­tion Sys­tem from the In­ter­na­tion­al Ten­nis Fed­er­a­tion (ITF).

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia Sports on Fri­day, the Pub­lic Re­la­tion's Of­fi­cer at the as­so­ci­a­tion Carlista Mo­hammed said: "This cer­ti­fi­ca­tion sig­ni­fies that Ten­nisTT’s Coach­es Ed­u­ca­tion Sys­tem is ca­pa­ble of in­de­pen­dent­ly cer­ti­fy­ing coach­es to the re­quired qual­i­ty stan­dard of the ITF. Based on the ad­vance lev­el sta­tus of our Coach­es Ed­u­ca­tion Sys­tem, Ten­nisTT was able to skip the low­est cer­ti­fi­ca­tion lev­el (White Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion) and move di­rect­ly to the Bronze Lev­el."

T&T now of­fi­cial­ly joins a small pool of 15 coun­tries world­wide to achieve a Bronze lev­el cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and the on­ly coun­try in the Eng­lish Speak­ing Caribbean to achieve any lev­el of Coach­es Ed­u­ca­tion cer­ti­fi­ca­tion from the ITF.

The award is be­ing con­sid­ered a ma­jor ac­com­plish­ment for T&T which feeds nice­ly in­to their goals of be­com­ing the re­gion­al hub for ten­nis de­vel­op­ment. "With this cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, we are au­tho­rized to in­de­pen­dent­ly put on ITF sanc­tioned cer­ti­fi­ca­tion cours­es up to Lev­el I. These cours­es will be con­duct­ed at our Na­tion­al Rac­quet Cen­tre and has im­mense po­ten­tial to at­tract lo­cal, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al coach­es to our shores," Mo­hammed ex­plained.

The award means that as of Oc­to­ber 2020, there will be four coun­tries achiev­ing White Lev­el Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, 15 coun­tries achiev­ing Bronze Lev­el Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, sev­en achiev­ing Sil­ver Lev­el Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and 18 re­ceiv­ing Gold Lev­el Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. T&T and Cu­ba cur­rent­ly are the on­ly coun­tries in the Caribbean and Cen­tral Amer­i­c­as to achieve ITF’s cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for its Coach­es Ed­u­ca­tion Sys­tem.

On­ly re­cent­ly Ten­nisTT was the re­cip­i­ent of an award for recog­ni­tion of ten­nis ex­cel­lence from the ITF in 2019 and though the year has al­most end­ed, Mitchell and com­pa­ny are aim­ing to achieve their ul­ti­mate goal of hav­ing an ITF Na­tion­al Train­ing Cen­tre in TT be­fore 2020 ends.

Mo­hammed and the ten­nis as­so­ci­a­tion thanks many who have helped in the Bronze Lev­el cer­tifi­cate achieve­ment, such as Min­is­ter of Sports Sham­fa Cud­joe, Bri­an Lewis, pres­i­dent, Lu­ca San­til­li, ITF Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor of De­vel­op­ment and In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions and John Goede, ITF De­vel­op­ment Of­fi­cer, Eng­lish Speak­ing Caribbean for their guid­ance through­out this en­tire process.