Sports challenges for 2007

Of course the NSC has always been criticised for being decidedly partial to cricket in respect of the allocation of its facilities.
Football, by far the nation’s most popular sport, still suffers the ignominy of not having any place to call home. The facilities available to the Football Federation for the organisation of its training and competition sessions during the year are not clearly delineated.
The NSC seems incapable of determining which facilities are to be used by which sporting disciplines at which time of the year. There is no prior determination of the usage of the facilities across the State by communities as against national sports associations.
The NSC has been unable at any given time to establish its own annual calendar for use of the existing facilities under its authority. This is largely because the associations do not all adhere to the Council’s request for submission of their respective annual calendars for this purpose.
The challenge facing sporting organisations in 2007 is that of ensuring that the facilities are adequately upgraded and available for use for both training and competition.
In neighbouring Grenada the various schools have opted for holding their annual sports meets on Saturdays and Sundays in an effort to ensure that they are all held before the commencement of CWC2007 warm up and competitive matches.
In St Vincent and the Grenadines it seems anathema to have schools consider the use of Saturdays and worse, Sundays, for the conduct of their Championships.
It is unfortunate and an absence of initiative for us to have abandoned the hosting of the annual Inter Secondary Schools Athletics Meet in 2006 and again in 2007. This does not make sense and shows the extent to which we still fail to understand the dynamics of sport or of its rightful place in the national development process and in the development of the human personality.
The schools’ authorities need to establish sound relations with national sports associations to fashion an annual calendar of events aimed at establishing a culture of sport in the nation beginning at the schools.

National Sports Associations
National sports associations are challenged in 2007 to engage more deliberately in their own professionalisation.
Clubs must become the order of the day and all associations ought to insist on club membership only and not of teams and individuals.