Four months af­ter the na­tion­al squash as­so­ci­a­tion board, led by for­mer pres­i­dent Di­ane Julien, was vot­ed out at a De­cem­ber 9 Gen­er­al Meet­ing, con­fir­ma­tion has come from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) that the new­ly elect­ed board, head­ed by Dirk Pru­dent, has been for­mal­ly recog­nised.

​TTOC’s de­ci­sion fol­lows the Julien-led board’s pre­vi­ous an­nounce­ment of its in­ten­tion to re­fer the mat­ter to the TTOC for in­de­pen­dent ar­bi­tra­tion. Fol­low­ing the De­cem­ber vote, both the Julien and Pru­dent fac­tions had claimed to be the le­git­i­mate lead­er­ship of the as­so­ci­a­tion.

​The TTOC’s con­fir­ma­tion now paves the way for the Pru­dent-led board to move for­ward with its strate­gic goals. Pru­dent had pre­vi­ous­ly com­plained about Julien’s al­leged re­fusal to hand over all as­sets fol­low­ing the spe­cial gen­er­al meet­ing (SGM).

"The TTOC ac­knowl­edges the suc­cess­ful con­clu­sion of the elec­toral process of Squash T&T, cul­mi­nat­ing in the rat­i­fi­ca­tion of the elec­tion held at the Spe­cial Gen­er­al Meet­ing on the 9th De­cem­ber, 2025.

"The TTOC for­mal­ly recog­nis­es the du­ly elect­ed board of SquashTT and your po­si­tion as pres­i­dent, as en­dorsed by the mem­ber­ship. We take this op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­tend our con­grat­u­la­tions to you and your team and look for­ward to your con­tin­ued lead­er­ship in ad­vanc­ing the de­vel­op­ment of squash in T&T,” an April 6 let­ter signed by TTOC vice chair­man Mush­taque Mo­hammed stat­ed.

​SquashTT pres­i­dent Pru­dent de­scribed the con­fir­ma­tion as an im­por­tant and pos­i­tive step for both the as­so­ci­a­tion and the sport.

“We are pleased to share that the TTOC has for­mal­ly recog­nised the du­ly elect­ed Board of SquashTT, fol­low­ing the rat­i­fi­ca­tion vote at our gen­er­al meet­ing on March 27, 2026.

"This is an im­por­tant and pos­i­tive step for­ward for the As­so­ci­a­tion. It gives us a clear plat­form to con­tin­ue the work of re­build­ing, strength­en­ing gov­er­nance, and mov­ing squash in Trinidad and To­ba­go ahead with uni­ty, pur­pose, and re­newed en­er­gy. We have al­ready sent a no­tice to Di­ane Julien & the rest of the for­mer Board seek­ing that they hand over all as­sets of SquashTT this week,” he wrote to as­so­ci­a­tion mem­bers on Mon­day.

​The Julien board had ini­tial­ly re­fused to recog­nise the out­come of last De­cem­ber’s SGM, ar­gu­ing that the meet­ing did not com­ply with SquashTT’s con­sti­tu­tion and by­laws, ren­der­ing any de­ci­sions in­valid. Dur­ing that meet­ing, how­ev­er, five mo­tions were passed unan­i­mous­ly by 91 vot­ing mem­bers, in­clud­ing a mo­tion to re­move all di­rec­tors from the board.

​Pru­dent, a nine-time T&T se­nior men’s squash cham­pi­on, was elect­ed as the new pres­i­dent. The oth­er elect­ed board mem­bers are Ricky Jages­sar, Nixon Cal­len­der, Sean Agos­ti­ni, and Ja­son Au­gus­tus.

Back­ground

Last Sep­tem­ber, Guardian Sport re­port­ed on two con­flict­ing dates for the pro­posed SGM. At­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing the Julien-led board and a group of mem­bers seek­ing their re­moval held op­pos­ing views on which date was valid.

​The group seek­ing to oust the lead­er­ship ac­cused the then-board of fail­ing to legal­ly con­vene a spe­cial meet­ing by Oc­to­ber 6—the date orig­i­nal­ly re­quest­ed. Ac­cord­ing to SquashTT’s by­laws, a spe­cial meet­ing must be called with­in three weeks of a writ­ten re­quest.

A let­ter, cit­ing con­cerns about the trans­paren­cy, gov­er­nance, man­age­ment and lead­er­ship of the na­tion­al squash as­so­ci­a­tion, was sub­mit­ted on Sep­tem­ber 15.

At that time, the board con­sist­ed of eight mem­bers: the pres­i­dent, Julien; Vergil Chat­ter­goon (vice pres­i­dent); Craig Be­har­ry (trea­sur­er); Pe­ter Pirtheesingh (sec­re­tary); and mem­bers Ramesh De­ok­iesingh Shel­don Skeete and Faith Gillezeau. Sev­er­al mem­bers sub­se­quent­ly re­signed.

​At­tor­neys for the Julien board had writ­ten to the mem­ber­ship claim­ing at­tempts to re­move the board were “un­rea­son­able and un­law­ful,” deny­ing al­le­ga­tions of gov­er­nance fail­ures, fi­nan­cial mis­man­age­ment, lack of trans­paren­cy, and breach of fidu­cia­ry du­ty.

​On Oc­to­ber 16, then-Sec­re­tary Ramesh De­ok­iesingh is­sued a no­tice for a meet­ing on Oc­to­ber 22 at the Pointe-a-Pierre Golf Club. How­ev­er, the req­ui­si­tion group con­vened their meet­ing on No­vem­ber 4 at the Cas­ca­dia Ho­tel in St Ann’s, which was lat­er ad­journed and suc­cess­ful­ly held on De­cem­ber 9.