Urgently needed, a collective approach to national sports development
A studied approach
In times past it was commonplace to regard sports as frivolity, an undertaking by the filthy rich who needed something to do to pass the time. Times have changed and sport is now one of the fastest growing industries in the world of business.
The US has gone well clear allowing countless athletes to emerge from their sport careers as millionaires. Our own Adonal Foyle has certainly been a beneficiary of the rapidly expanding opportunities in sport. He has been able to assist his family in Canouan and facilitate his own personal development through his exploits in basketball.
But while we can boast of Foyles achievement as well as the success of others including Pamenos Ballantyne who has done well for himself in terms of winning prize money, we cannot at the same time lay claim to them having been the result of a systematic approach on the part of the nation that is St Vincent and the Grenadines.
By and large, the successes we have had have come from individual effort, for the most part. In some instances an individual coach has made contact with a coach at an institution abroad and this led to the attainment of a scholarship for this or that athlete.
In some cases it has been the athlete who took the time to send out letters to coaches at different institutions in search of assistance.
At no time has there ever been a deliberate national policy to creatively fashion for ourselves an approach to sports development that makes sense if only because it is integrated in the broader national development strategy for all of St Vincent and the Grenadines.
This approach was never viable and consequently our sport development has been struggling at best. We have done precious little and whenever we seem to think that we have progressed it has been little more than the one step forward, two steps backward that has often been criticised everywhere it happens.
Today we need a more studied approach to the management of sport. Without this we are unlikely to move forward.
Sport has been such a thriving industry that opportunities in different careers are abundant.