The Road to Oman: The jour­ney of Hock­ey Ja­maica to the in­au­gur­al FIH Hock­ey5s World Cup 2024, pub­lished in 2025 by Fabi­an Stew­art, dis­cuss­es chrono­log­i­cal­ly the five-year plan­ning and ex­e­cu­tion process cul­mi­nat­ing in Ja­maica’s qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the World Cup. Co­in­ci­den­tal­ly, prepa­ra­tion for the five-year jour­ney of Ja­maica qual­i­fy­ing for the in­au­gur­al Hock­ey World Cup oc­curred while the Fac­ul­ty of Sport re­vamped its Mas­ter’s in Sport Busi­ness Man­age­ment pro­gramme. My first im­pres­sion of this ex­pos­i­to­ry nar­ra­tive was its suit­abil­i­ty as a Caribbean read­er-friend­ly re­source for sport project man­age­ment and re­lat­ed cours­es and train­ing.

The au­thor, a qual­i­fied and sea­soned strate­gic man­age­ment pro­fes­sion­al, played the sport as a boy. The road is a lit­er­al and metaphor­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the long, ar­du­ous, and in­sight­ful jour­ney to build and train mul­ti­ple teams for in­ter­na­tion­al hock­ey com­pe­ti­tions on a shoe­string bud­get. As a lec­tur­er, Fabi­an Stew­art knows first­hand the dearth of cur­rent learn­ing sport man­age­ment re­sources writ­ten from Caribbean per­spec­tives. Be­yond eu­pho­ria about Caribbean teams’ per­for­mances in an un­con­ven­tion­al sport, show­ing the pool­ing of hu­man and phys­i­cal cap­i­tal for a project out­come that ini­tial­ly seemed im­pos­si­ble will teach valu­able sports non-prof­it man­age­ment lessons.

The book is re­plete with prac­ti­cal and re­lat­able sports man­age­ment nuggets. Stew­art jus­ti­fied key sports man­age­ment de­ci­sions by re­fer­ring read­ers to ver­i­fi­able lead­er­ship the­o­ries from thought lead­ers. Us­ing flash­backs, pho­tos, and oth­er nar­ra­tive el­e­ments may make the text ap­pear less ap­peal­ing as an in­for­ma­tion­al re­source. Some parts of the book are dif­fer­ent from tra­di­tion­al texts. How­ev­er, this does not min­imise the book’s sports ad­min­is­tra­tion ap­plic­a­bil­i­ty to Caribbean set­tings.

The book is a com­pre­hen­sive Caribbean sports project man­age­ment case study. Case stud­ies are ex­cel­lent teach­ing and learn­ing re­sources. For up­com­ing sports man­agers, cur­rent and re­al-life anec­dotes on de­ci­sive ac­tions are ac­ces­si­ble, re­lat­able, and trans­fer­able sports lead­er­ship learn­ings. Caribbean prac­tic­ing and as­pir­ing sports man­agers are like­li­er to ap­ply strate­gies and ap­proach­es that have worked at home.

The jour­ney of the Ja­maican teams to the F1H Hock­ey 5S 2024 World Cup in Oman is one of re­silience. Even amidst fi­nan­cial and oth­er con­straints, ex­em­plary sports lead­er­ship does yield suc­cess­ful out­comes. The book em­pha­sis­es this mes­sage. Read­ers will ap­pre­ci­ate Stew­art’s treat­ment of Youth de­vel­op­ment, a strat­e­gy cen­tral to the Road to Oman.

The Caribbean has an im­pres­sive glob­al sports pres­ence. Glob­al part­ner­ships and col­lab­o­ra­tions are in­flu­enc­ing sport com­pe­tences in the re­gion. Doc­u­ment­ing di­gestible sports lead­er­ship and coach­ing ap­proach­es helps build on ex­po­sure to in­ter­na­tion­al tal­ent. Just as sports tal­ent is in­suf­fi­cient to win com­pe­ti­tions, Stew­art im­plies that knowl­edge of sports man­age­ment prin­ci­ples is on­ly part of the com­plex­i­ties for wins.

In ad­di­tion to the man­age­ment top­ics in text­books world­wide, the au­thor utilis­es text breaks to show read­ers im­por­tant but less ob­vi­ous man­age­ment dis­po­si­tions. For ex­am­ple, Stew­art us­es mile­posts, in this case, blue font, to cue read­ers to what and how he thinks at un­ex­pect­ed junc­tures. Lead­ers use time ef­fi­cient­ly. They trou­bleshoot and con­sid­er the “what ifs?” even when plans are in place. They must re­main calm dur­ing crises, as any­thing else could de­rail play­ers and coach­es.

Of­ten draw­ing on his lead­er­ship phi­los­o­phy, Stew­art al­so tells read­ers about the peo­ple, places, and cir­cum­stances that shaped his de­ter­mi­na­tion and grit. The Road to Oman cred­its many peo­ple, from the most in­flu­en­tial ex­ec­u­tives in the In­ter­na­tion­al Hock­ey Fed­er­a­tion to the ball boy, for their roles in the jour­ney’s out­come. Gen­er­al­ly, grat­i­tude mo­ti­vates but is even more cen­tral to man­ag­ing vol­un­teers. Stew­art’s re­peat­ed use of func­tion­al/dys­func­tion­al to de­scribe his work fam­i­ly trans­lates to an im­per­fect but val­ued team.

Sports lead­er­ship style varies across ge­o­gra­phies, cul­tures, dis­ci­plines, and time. The au­thor cau­tions read­ers that the sport man­age­ment mod­el is not a “one size fits all.” The book is a man­age­able and in­sight­ful read, even for re­luc­tant read­ers. It is suit­able for spark­ing mean­ing­ful dis­cus­sions about sports lead­er­ship among sports man­age­ment stu­dents and prac­tic­ing and as­pir­ing sports lead­ers in Caribbean set­tings. The Road to Oman an­swers prob­ing ques­tions such as: How do you nav­i­gate lan­guage bar­ri­ers and oth­er cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences dur­ing in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tions? Al­so, how do you piv­ot when fi­nances are thin?

The Road to Oman could be se­lect­ed as a Book Club read for en­er­gis­ing sport man­age­ment re­treat dis­cus­sions. It could al­so be the book choice for a read­ing-based one-week sem­i­nar be­fore sports man­age­ment un­der­grad­u­ate or grad­u­ate cours­es start. Imag­ine the analy­ses from con­nec­tions that the small but pow­er­ful mo­ments in the book would ac­ti­vate! The book can al­so be adapt­ed to make it an in­struc­tion­al re­source for new fa­cil­i­ta­tors and the on­board­ing of new sports ad­min­is­tra­tors.

The au­thor­ship of this sports man­age­ment book cre­ative­ly ex­em­pli­fies strate­gies and ac­tions for suc­cess­ful­ly lead­ing Caribbean sports projects. The time­ly pub­li­ca­tion is a com­mend­able ad­di­tion to knowl­edge trans­fer, an­oth­er im­por­tant at­tribute of lead­ers.

Dr Claudette Coote-Thomp­son is the Cur­ricu­lum De­vel­op­ment Spe­cial­ist, Fac­ul­ty of Sport, The UWI and can be reached at claudette.cootethomp­son@uwi­mona.edu.jm