Camps in Sustaining Sport Development
Over the past several years we have grown accustomed to an increasing number of sport camps being organised around St Vincent and the Grenadines, following the closure of the academic year at the end of June.
Of course, the annual school vacation begins in July and so children are excited by the prospect that they do not have the daily grind of academic work and regular academic assessments relative to the various subjects they are committed to studying at school when it is in session.
It has long been common practice for several institutions to use the school vacation period for the convening of their own camps, consistent with their respective mandates. With a less stressful training regimen, these institutions take the time to engage young people in getting better informed and appreciative of the reason for their existence and the numerous benefits that can be derived from membership.
Sport groupings use their camps to achieve, at once, knowledge, understanding and skill competency in their particular sporting disciplines. They seek to build camaraderie and solidarity. They want the young people to bond but around the sport and the particular grouping. In a sense, the sport administrators seek to so immerse their charges in all aspects of the particular sports that they emerge from the camps significantly socialised in the sport and the organisation.
The state of Vincentian sport
There is a tendency for us to overplay the state of sport in St Vincent and the Grenadines when in fact we have only minimal success in sport. Perhaps it is this very fact that causes us to be so upbeat about sport in our country. We seem to be more concerned about celebrating the successes than about addressing the severe distress that is impacting our sport development process.
If we are honest with ourselves, sport in St Vincent and the Grenadines is struggling, in large measure because the leadership of the country does not understand sport beyond the political currency that it brings to the table from time to time, especially when general elections are due.
One has only to reflect on the struggle of Kineke Alexander, our most successful 400m female athlete, who, even with a relative of sorts in government, could not get the financial support her performances deserved, when she was at the top of her game. She was sent literally from pillar to post in response to her requests until she was so fed up that she insisted that she would no longer be made a fool, no politician’s plaything.
Shafiqua Maloney sent several requests seeking financial assistance. Out of frustration, in 2023, she was featured in The News newspaper, chronicling her sojourn as she struggled to get governmental assistance but to no avail.
One interview on Sportsmax, in which Shafiqua exposed the harsh truths about lack of support, went viral. The embarrassment it brought to the government and the sporting image of our country, seemed to have cajoled those in authority to respond positively, even if only briefly. Her Olympic achievement in Paris2024 saw the nation elevate her and a few commercial enterprises lent support. The little government support she received may well have been a useful exercise in preparation from the broader political largesse that appears to have consumed the country ahead of the general elections of 2025. Happily, she is now sponsored by an international sportswear manufacturer, PUMA.
One is however, yet to grasp the significance of the country’s Prime Minister taking her to the United Nationals General Assembly while he delivered his address to the annual gathering.
The foregoing cases of Kineke Alexander and Shafiqua Maloney, offer but two examples of Vincentian athletes who, having attained acclaim beyond local and regional shores, found themselves struggling to get by, financially and otherwise. They reflect the sad truth of the almost total absence of any genuine national sport development plan on the part of the Vincentian government.
While there has been some sport infrastructure provided, it remains sporadic and haphazard, at best. It appears that more attention is paid to their vote-catching value than to forging a systematic developmental pathway of which they form an integral part. Little attention is paid to their maintenance and overall sport development and sustainability.
The naming of Sport Ambassadors has meant little, even to their recipients since they have no specified role and/or responsibility in Vincentian society consistent with what many may have associated with the designation.
It is not surprising therefore, that camps do not form an integral part of the government’s sport programme. After several years of offering Vincentian youths attachments to the government’s Sports Department there is little to show in terms of how the beneficiaries of the two-year programme, have gone on to continue along a development path in careers in sport. Many return to the ranks of the nation’s unemployed, soon to be completely ignored and forgotten.
Political myopia in Vincentian sport
Some Vincentian cricketers, footballers, basketballers and track and field athletes have chosen careers in sport. To date, some have been more successful than others. However, the numbers remain few.
Without any guidance at the governmental level, national sports associations have to diligently engage themselves in the development of their respective sports. Funding is always a challenge, even in sports which are more expensive and attract children of middle and upper class parents. But this struggle is neither seen, acknowledged nor understood by our governmental authorities.
Some associations, their athletes, coaches and parents of athletes are well aware of how Vincentian politics work and may well understand how much easier it appears to access support of individual ministers and some governmental institutions in the years of general elections than at any other time in their five-year mandate.
Sport simply does not feature in the National Plan of St Vincent and the Grenadines.
As a nation, we have as yet failed to develop a national sport culture.
National sports associations, now attracting individuals who are committed to sport careers and diligently access education and training programmes consistent with what obtains in the developed countries of the world, are increasingly growing and developing.
There is evidence of the growing professionalism in Vincentian sport, a phenomenon that as yet escapes the leadership of our government. There were six Vincentian graduates among the first graduating cohort of the University of the West Indies (UWI) Sports Academy last year, four of whom attained first class honours. Not much attention was paid to these achievements nor the achievers beyond what the UWI undertook. Less consideration has been given to their placement in appropriately created sport professions consistent with their training. This may well have more to do with the absence of a role for sport in the National Plan and from the vision and mission as conceived by its framers.
Camps as a development pathway
Recently, President of the National Olympic Committee (NOC), Stephen Joachim, committed the organistion’s executive to engage in an initiative which afforded each of its members, national sports associations, to the hosting of camps annually. He insisted that it was one of the most beneficial ways of facilitating the development of their respective sporting disciplines.
Camps organised properly by national sport associations guarantees the continuous development of the coaches, athletes, technical officials and administrators, each of whom are primary stakeholders. The annual expenditures of the NOC on training coaches can only prove beneficial to sport development to the extent that those trained are given every opportunity to show what they have learnt by producing athletes from the grassroot through to the elite level.
National sports associations must engage in camps that facilitate continuous education in sport. Just as teachers, doctors and other professionals must be forever retooling, so too must our certified and trained sport personnel.
For years our sport leaders have returned from congresses and conferences of their respective international sport federations, overawed by the fact that they met so many qualified sport professionals, many of whom are committed to continuous research in the science of sport and the latter’s emergence as the fastest growing industry in the world today. Now, opportunities abound around our Caribbean, for our young people to rise to similar and higher sport-academic heights.
Some of our local sport camps have seen ‘experts’ brought in from sporting bodies across the Caribbean and further afield. This is a way to facilitate the cross-fertilisation of ideas, strategies and programmes that would ultimately enhance the local athletes and broader approaches to sport development.
The time has come to set aside the egos and pettiness in respect of the ownership of ideas regarding ways to the attainment of success in sport. No one person, be he/she coach or administrator or other sport professional, has a monopoly on the pathway to success. Experimentation remains a necessary feature of growth and development. Camps allow for experimentation.
Local sports personnel must know the culture of our young people and positively impact their values and approaches to sport allowing for an appreciation that these play in their becoming human; in their becoming whole persons.
Grenada and St Lucia have shown that their coaches are as capable as those of Jamaica, in producing home-grown athletic talent, a truth that should long have inspired the establishment of a Caribbean High Performance Centre, servicing the region. Such an institution has already been conceptualised by the leadership of the Caribbean Association of National Olympic Committees (CANOC) and a comprehensive project produced by the University of the West Indies Open Campus, with Hope Estate in Grenada, the targeted location.
Camps at the local level would lead to their replication at the regional level, along a scientifically crafted development pathway for sport. The collaboration amongst our coaches, for example, can lead to the overall enhancement of the performances of athletes across the entire region. Competition is healthy and that includes facilitating it amongst our sport personnel, from a regional perspective, while still seeking the best interest of one’s own athletes.
Conclusion
Camps constitute a major developmental educational tool for any aspect of sport. The learning opportunities are always designed to facilitate growth through to maturation and ultimately, the attainment of sporting excellence.
Opportunities to organise and conduct sport camps must not be a waste of already scarce financial resources, but an excellent opportunity to contribute, in no small measure, to nation building.
Sport is about people.
Sports is about community. Sport is about bringing people together to build a more harmonious nation.
