Grassroots Athletics Programme (GAP) – Building the base for Vincentian athletics

As we begin the month of April, many of our athletes are hopeful that having lost their opportunities to represent St Vincent and the Grenadines at the annual Carifta Games last year because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Games will take place in Bermuda this year, 13 – 15 August 2021 and that they will showcase their athletics talent.

The coaches who have been consistently at work also remain hopeful that this year they would be able to reap the benefits of their labour.

Following the extensive Retreat convened by the leadership of TASVG last year and the construction of the national stadium, the sport of athletics has been afforded a great opportunity to significantly advance the sport in the country.

The foundation stone of any sport is that of participation. In respect of athletics in St Vincent and the Grenadines, TASVG is now paying renewed attention to crafting a broad-based Grassroots Athletics Programme (GAP) that begins with the communities closest to the newly constructed national stadium at Diamond.

Brighton, Stubbs and Biabou have been singled out by Team Athletics St Vincent and the Grenadines for special attention because of their sporting legacy as well as proximity to the national stadium. The programme will incorporate the several villages in and around the aforementioned places.

This initiative will be a pilot project which can later on be replicated across St Vincent and the Grenadines. The concept is that athletics can and should be practised everywhere.

While the schools constitute an important central point to identify the children and teachers, the emphasis will be on the several communities themselves and engaging them in athletics as a vehicle for community development.

The initiative is driven by the TASVG Strategic Plan 2021-2024. An important feature of the plan is that of significantly enhanced participation

Over the next several months, the communities will be combed to engage parents, teachers and children to get involved in athletics in a systematic way. The thrust will be led by the Technical Director of TASVG, Chester Morgan, and will involve Rawlson Morgan and Philcol Jeffers as well as several of the organisation’s coaches.

GAP will facilitate engaging children of all ages in the experience of running, jumping and throwing, the fundamentals of the sport.

Members of the communities targeted will be exposed to training in all aspects of the sport of athletics – administration, coaching, officiating, sports medicine, anti-doping and selection.

One critical area of participation is accessing the requisite support in terms of material and moral requisites. Thanks to Yemi and Jabari Khensu, who created ‘Project Lace Them Up’,  now supported by a ‘GoFundMe’ initiative, aimed initially, at providing shoes for the neediest of Vincentian athletes through to equipment and other requirements of participants in the sport of athletics, we can jump-start GAP.

The communities will enjoy access to the facilities of the new stadium to make it one of their major components of their critical development pathway. They must care for it and ensure that it serves the purpose for which it was intended.

GAP is a pathway to the sustainable future of athletics in St Vincent and the Grenadines.