Min­is­ter of Sports and Youth Af­fairs Phillip Watts is be­ing praised for his role in en­sur­ing that mem­bers of the coun­try’s Un­der-18 and Un­der-23 teams who are sched­uled to rep­re­sent the coun­try at the NACAC Cham­pi­onships be­tween Ju­ly 10-12 in Tlax­cala, Mex­i­co, are giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to do so.

Some 30 ath­letes and eight of­fi­cials were left heart­bro­ken as there were no funds to fa­cil­i­tate the trip, with the par­ents of some ath­letes tak­ing to so­cial me­dia to vent their con­cerns. How­ev­er, Watts, crit­i­cised in the past for a de­ci­sion to skip a key meet­ing with mem­bers of 15 Na­tion­al Gov­ern­ing Bod­ies (NG­Bs) on May 11th for fund­ing for fu­ture events, on Thurs­day se­cured the funds amidst con­cerns that funds at the SporTT were be­ing with­held.

Though no fig­ure of the amount was giv­en, Ephraim Ser­rette, pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ic Ad­min­is­tra­tion of T&T (NAAATT), is­sued a re­lease thank­ing the min­is­ter for his role in the funds be­ing giv­en. “I just want to take this op­por­tu­ni­ty to thank the Ho­n­ourable Min­is­ter Philip Watts for his time­ly in­ter­ven­tion to en­sure that Trinidad and To­ba­go’s par­tic­i­pa­tion at the NACAC Un­der-18 and 23 hap­pens. I mean, he re­al­ly res­cued the team be­cause what was be­com­ing an ex­treme­ly un­for­tu­nate sit­u­a­tion for our young ath­letes and even coach­es, af­ter we had tak­en a de­ci­sion to with­draw the team, hav­ing not been re­ceiv­ing any com­mu­ni­ca­tions from SportTT, we had to take that de­ci­sion,” Ser­rette told the me­dia.

The track and field boss al­so called on Watts to re­view the op­er­a­tions of SportTT on the way fund­ing is be­ing made avail­able to sports in the coun­try. “I would al­so ad­vise or, say to him that some sort of thor­ough re­view needs to be done on the gov­er­nance de­ci­sion-mak­ing process and the whole op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy of that SportTT board. The whole ad­min­is­tra­tive process, it’s flawed. And na­tion­al gov­ern­ing bod­ies shouldn’t be placed in this type of sit­u­a­tion, you know, the un­cer­tain­ty of fund­ing and whether ath­letes, you know, are risk­ing miss­ing these re­gion­al or in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tions. So again, thanks to the Min­is­ter, hats off for his in­ter­ven­tion,” Ser­rette said.

Both Ar­nald Ram, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of SporTT and his chair­man, Kester Lendor, were asked to make the funds avail­able to the team, Guardian Me­dia was told. But while Ram could not of­fer a com­ment yes­ter­day when he was con­tact­ed, Lendor said SporTT has been at­tempt­ing to pro­vide with the lim­it­ed re­sources avail­able to it.

“I think there were some set­backs with the fund­ing is­sue be­cause we did not have funds, and I’m talk­ing about SporTT; we did not have funds avail­able to us in our ac­counts. So we had been await­ing some re­leas­es. It just so hap­pened that the re­leas­es came a lit­tle bit late. I think even­tu­al­ly it worked out well and we were able to fi­nal­ly get the re­lease and dis­burse it to the en­ti­ties. So it is a ques­tion that we have to- we are in a sit­u­a­tion of lim­it­ed fund­ing. We have to find ways to al­lo­cate the fund­ing as best as we can.”

“There are a lot of NG­Bs, 15 NG­Bs that we are re­spon­si­ble for, 15 NG­Bs that we are re­spon­si­ble for. They all have needs. They all have op­er­a­tional needs and stuff like that. We don’t have an end­less sup­ply of funds sit­ting there wait­ing. A lot of times it is try­ing to find ways that we can find that mon­ey or cut and paste from our al­lo­ca­tion and ap­ply to dif­fer­ent NG­Bs based on their needs,” ex­plained.

Mean­while, Watts al­so made funds avail­able to the mem­bers of the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) with the coun­try’s con­tin­gents to fly the red, white and black at the com­ing Com­mon­wealth Games in Glas­gow, Scot­land, from Ju­ly 23-Au­gust 2, as well as the Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (CAC) Games, Ju­ly 24-Au­gust 8 in San­to Domin­go, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic.

Di­ane Hen­der­son, TTOC pres­i­dent, had an ear­ful for Guardian Me­dia Sports when she was con­tact­ed, ex­plain­ing how grate­ful her or­gan­i­sa­tion was to the min­is­ter. “So just to give con­text, the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee can­not fund all of its trav­el oblig­a­tions for big games like this, 200 peo­ple to CAC and 60 peo­ple to Glas­gow, and al­so both at the same time. But in the past, we have al­ways asked for sup­port from the gov­ern­ment for trav­el ex­pens­es for our games, all our games, be­cause that is a fi­nan­cial oblig­a­tion which we do not have cov­ered un­der any of our grants.”

“We have some­times sub­si­dies, but they nev­er cov­er the en­tire thing. So the point about it is that this is some­thing that we’ve asked the gov­ern­ment for years past, and the gov­ern­ment has al­ways been very good in terms of un­der­stand­ing the im­por­tance of be­ing able to sup­port the trav­el ex­pens­es and lug­gage for the ath­letes to go.”

“This one was re­quest­ed since last year, and we now re­ceived it for, specif­i­cal­ly this year, was the Win­ter Games, CAC, and the Com­mon­wealth Games Glas­gow. So we were ex­treme­ly grate­ful that we were fi­nal­ly able to ob­tain it, be­cause tick­ets for 150-plus of­fi­cials is not ex­act­ly an easy task,” Hen­der­son ex­plained.

𝗡𝗡𝗡𝗡𝗡 𝗡-𝗡𝗡/𝗡-��<D835><DFEF> <D835><DDE7><D83Mekhi Guis­chard‑Year­wood U18 Boys 100m, 4×100m Point Fortin New Jets

Ay­dan David­son U18 Boys 100m, 4×100m Burn­ley AC

Ka­mari Di­az U18 Boys 200m, 4×100m Sim­plex AC

J’quan Dou­glas U18 Boys 200m, 4×100m Zenith AC

Khordel Lewis U18 Boys 400m, 4×400m Pace and Per­for­mance Fac­to­ry

Al­fred Pierre U18 Boys 400m, 4×400m Abi­lene Wild­cats

Brion Scott U18 Boys 800m, 4×400m Pace and Per­for­mance Fac­to­ry

Christo­pher Sam­my U18 Boys 800m, 3000m Pace and Per­for­mance Fac­to­ry

Michal Paul U18 Boys Long Jump, 4×100m, 4×400m Con­corde AC

Jafaari Shaw U18 Boys Dis­cus Throw R. S. S. Phoenix

Khor­dae Lewis U18 Boys 4×400m Pace and Per­for­mance Fac­to­ry

𝗨𝗨𝗨 𝗨��<D835><DDFF><D835><DDF9><D835><DE00>

Jael Pe­ters U18 Girls 100m, 200m Burn­ley AC

Eden Chee‑Wah U18 Girls 200m, 400m, 4×400m Memph­Soleil Caruth U18 Girls 400m, 4×400m Con­corde AC

Ny­la Kerr U18 Girls 800m, 1500m, 4×400m Pace and Per­for­mance Fac­to­ry

Dai­ja Reid U18 Girls Hep­tathlon Zenith AC

La Queen Welch U18 Girls Hep­tathlon QRC

𝗨𝗨𝗨 ��<D835><DDF2><D835><DDFB>

Aaron Charles U23 Men 100m, 200m Un­at­tached

Rev­ell Web­ster U23 Men 100m Con­corde AC

Ta­fari Wal­dron U23 Men 1500m, 5000m U. T. Cheyne West U23 Men 400m Hur­dles Abi­lene Wil­Jay­den Maxwell U23 Men Triple Jump Con­corde AC

Le­Bron James U23 Men Javelin To­ba­go Fal­cons

Do­ri­an Charles U23 Men Javelin Point Fortin New Jets

𝗨𝗨𝗨 𝗨��<D835><DDFA><D835><DDF2><D835><DDFB>

Han­nah Reid U23 Women 400m Phoenix AC

Aniqah Bai­ley U23 Women 1500m Pace and Per­for­mance Fac­to­ry

Gi­an­na Paul U23 Women 100m Hur­dles, Long Jump Con­cordeKaneisha Shel­bourne U23 Women Triple JumpLalei­ni Grant U23 Women Dis­cus Throw Mer­cury AC

Tenique Vin­cent U23 Women Hep­tathlon Con­corde AC

𝗧𝗧𝗧𝗧 𝗧𝗧𝗧𝗶𝗶𝗶𝗶𝗶𝘀

Role Name

Team Man­ag­er Sher­win Joseph

Coach Don­nel Stafford

Coach Aiesha Colthrust

Coach Der­rick Si­mon

Coach Ker­ron Browne

Coach Chev­elle McPher­son

Mas­sage Ther­a­pist Kel­ly Spicer

Mas­sage