Sport and Education in St Vincent and the Grenadines – Part II
In the previous Column dated 16 September 2022, we addressed the matter of the importance of linking sport with the broader education programme of children. Mention was also made of the fact that such an approach is what is the norm in most of the countries of the world.
But there are other aspects of the sport and education mix that has to receive our attention, going forward.
Pathways to excellence
Mention was made already about the fact that sport has a seemingly exhaustive list of career opportunities that are as important to individuals with the appropriate interest as is the case with other professions in global society today.
The point we wish to make here is that in sport it is possible to find several important avenues to excellence. Athletes can access scholarships that allow for being able to continue balancing academics with sport, as was highlighted in respect of Wendell Mottley and Uric Bobb of Trinidad and Tobago in the previous Column.
Athletes can also compete through to elite status, in the process, accessing lucrative contracts with sportswear enterprises as well as from advertising deals in different countries.
The drive towards professionalism in sport allows athletes to graduate from their competitive careers through to coaching, becoming agents for other athletes , among the many available options.
There is no doubt that the pathways to excellence in sport are not always easy. Many challenges are to be experienced along the way. In some instances, the individual falls by the wayside, as so often happens in other fields of endeavour.
The rigours of rising to the top in any career requires discipline.
Athletes, scholarships and professional contracts
For decades Vincentian athletes have been competing with others from around the world to access scholarships at universities in the USA. We have had several athletes who have successfully made it to and through the USA’s NCAA and NAIA systems, some with mixed results. Many of them have stayed in the USA where they have made their homes.
Admittedly, this country has not had the benefit of several scholarships by the aforementioned route, especially when compared to some of our fellow Caribbean countries.
We have had a few Vincentian footballers, Tennis players and basketballers who have been fortunate enough to access scholarships to US institutions. Of the foregoing, Adonal Foyle has ended up with perhaps the most lucrative pathway, having excelled with Golden State Warriors in the NBA.
The majority of Vincentian sports scholarship holders have been earned by athletics.
Some footballers have also been fortunate enough to access professional contracts in the USA and Europe.
Our cricketers have also been able to access contracts with English County cricket teams and the West Indies.
In all of the foregoing, our numbers from St Vincent and the Grenadines remain relatively small. A better mode of analysis would be to speak about the numbers per population size of the countries being compared. That way we fare much better.
Enter Jamaica
In the recent past, some of the secondary education institutions in Jamaica have been seeking out Vincentian track and field athletes. Unfortunately we have not yet witnessed any anxiety to solicit athletes from other sports to Jamaican schools.
Over the past few years, beginning with Handal Roban, Vincentian athletes have been offered scholarships by Jamaica College and Kingston College.
Akani Slater was the recipient of a scholarship from the GC Foster School of Physical Education and Sport in Jamaica, while some appear to have received partial scholarships to the same institution.
Roban has moved on to Penn State university in the US, effective last August.
Challenges
There is an important lesson for all our young people and their parents in respect of offers of scholarships and semi and/or professional contracts.
The rapid growth in professional sport has spawned as much that is bad as there is good.
The United Nations and several other organisations have had to address the matter of the disgusting scandals of several children from Africa and South America, taken to Europe by so-called ‘scouts’ for professional teams who have later been left on the streets as homeless and mendicant. This has attained the level of an international scandal.
Some coaches, administrators and ‘scamps’ often take advantage of athletes, especially where parents either lack the interest and/or think themselves unable to understand what is being discussed.
Some athletes and parents are often so overwhelmed by the ‘silk’ but ‘forked’ tongue of coaches that they do not even realise the extent to which they have been duped. In some instances, athletes are conned into believing that they are in receipt of full scholarships when in fact they are not. They may well be only in receipt of partial scholarship and have little or no way of being able to make up the financial difference.
The fact is that in some of the aforementioned challenging situations, parents and the athletes are often their own worst enemies for not have taken the time to fully understand the documentation or the offers communicated to them. Faced with financial challenges as mentioned here some parents and athletes turn just about everywhere for the financial assistance, which, in some instances is necessary for them to access their academic certificates, and, in others, to merely make ends meet.
Sometimes, parents find themselves in the unenviable position of having to approach politicians for financial assistance to help their children through the challenges confronting them.
In some instances the athletes share whatever little resources each receives, to facilitate their own success.
Proposal for SVG
There is little doubt that there is today, increasing opportunities for young people to turn to sport as a career option, and a lucrative one at that.
But the existing situation is untenable. There has to be a change in the way we, as a Vincentian society, approach sport.
We are here proposing that we create a more scientifically, structured approach to sport in all aspects.
We must begin by acknowledging that physical literacy must be a foundational principle of education and life in society. Our children must be encouraged to pursue mastery of movement as much as they strive after proficiency in literacy (communication skills) and numeracy.
Physical education must be compulsory at the elementary and secondary school levels, with appropriately trained physical educators in place at the respective institutions.
We could create a National Sports Academy that would enable those who wish to pursue sport careers, whether as athletes or engage in any of the other option in the ever-expanding array of sporting endeavours, to be specifically focused on their respective pathways to excellence.
Athletes who access scholarships ought to be treated almost like those who access these awards in the academic line. There must be an institutional framework in place that establishes and maintains a database of the scholarship winners, the nature and duration of their scholarships, who is meeting the financial requirements, choice of study/focus and semester updates on performances in the classroom and on the field of play.
Where partial scholarships are received, those wishing to take them up would need to know how the rest of the financial requirements are to be provided.
We must ensure that career guidance programmes incorporate the sport career options and that the latter are not treated as somehow being of lesser importance than the others.
There is enough going on in sport for us to move to a stage of planning, monitoring and evaluation of those who choose sport to enable them to feel just as confident of their role in nation building as those who have adopted the straight academic stream.
Sometimes we undervalue the fact that success in sport, any sport, required the application of our critical-thinking skills. Fast bowlers invoke pace judgement. Footballers are compelled to understand triangulation and its consequences. Golfers understand aerodynamics as much as the racing drivers…and the list goes on.
Sportspeople are not stupid. They too have brains and their mental faculties are constantly being put to use in training and competition.
In today’s sporting world communication skills remain priority. Live streaming and the commitment of social media to promote athletes and their achievements, regardless of sport, demand that athletes are able to communicate to their audiences, well.
Conclusion
There has to be a new mindset in our understand of and approach to the development of sport and the several stakeholders. We are all engaged, ultimately, in the same business of striving to build a nation. In this process, there must be premium value placed on every one of us. None can be left out of the process.
