Coaches must face up to the challenges

The St Vincent and the Grenadines National Olympic Committee, NOC, continues to service the sport development process in this country where the governmental authorities seem to have either grown tired or completely ignored.

Grassroots Talent Identification

This year, as happened in the past, the NOC has engaged the Grassroots Talent Identification programme. The sporting disciplines involved are athletics, basketball, boxing, cycling, table tennis, taekwondo, tennis and volleyball.

Taekwondo has only recently come on board while tennis has been finding it difficult in the past to get its programme going, but has given an undertaking that it is now ready.

Volleyball has been doing two sessions weekly; one on Saturdays and another on Sundays.

Gideon Labban has been designated the Technical Coordinator of the Grassroots Talent identification programme of the NOC, a responsibility that he has undertaken with great gusto. He has been convening monthly meetings with the Technical Directors of the sports involved in the Grassroots Talent Identification programme.

Effective Wednesday 31 October 2007, the NOC aired a new, dynamic television advertisement promoting the programme.

The programme essentially means that the NOC is seeking to ensure that in several communities across the nation on any given Saturday the children and all other interested persons are being encouraged to participate in and are taught fundamental sporting skills. Ultimately as children grow older they would choose a particular sport on which to focus their attention. At the younger ages however they are advised to have fun playing as many sporting disciplines as possible.