When will we get serious enough about sport in SVG?
As we begin yet another year in St Vincent and the Grenadines, we think of what the future holds in respect of sport in our beautiful country. Sadly, even the thought of a future for sport in this country sends shivers down the spine of anyone with some modicum of good sense. What we see around us makes little sense and at times it all defies logic. Perhaps it all has to do with the fact that for far too long we have readily accepted certification as equating intelligence and education.
Those who govern society often allow themselves to be so consumed with power that they market themselves as demi-gods. They have little time for the ideas of others whom they demean almost beyond recognition.
One of the legacies of colonisation in Caribbean countries is the refusal of many leaders to conceptualise sport as anything beyond recreational pastime. Indeed, even when evidence is presented to the contrary, they use their positions of power to insist on their own ill-advised stance.
Arnos Vale Sports Complex
The Arnos Vale Sports Complex continues to be held aloft as this country’s premier sports facility. If only because this facility is often used for the major regional and international cricket and football activities, the Complex remains in focus though it does not always receive the attention it deserves.
Over the years of its existence no government has adequately managed the Arnos Vale Sports Complex. It has been allowed to exist without a comprehensive maintenance programme in place. Sometimes it appears that we are prepared to throw good money after bad, in respect of this particular sporting facility.
The hard courts in the Complex at Arnos Vale have had expensive surfaces laid on several occasions. But just as soon as one expenditure is made on new surfaces, so their destruction begins.
The seemingly tacit agreement that the hardcourts are ideal for fetes of all varieties does much to bring some valuable revenue to the coffers of the National Sports Council (NSC), allows for this to be something of a priority without adequate attention being paid to monitoring and evaluating the facility following each new event.
For decades, we have witnessed the destruction of the stands around the hard courts by the elements and the multiple users. The covering of the stands is often lost to rust and replaced or repaired whenever there is a major sporting event being hosted here. Between events, there is little evidence that anyone pays due attention to the maintenance of the seating areas.
It would be most interesting to get some idea of the annual expenditure on the maintenance of the hardcourts and the frequency with which comprehensive repairs have to be undertaken.
The Arnos Vale #1 and #2 playing fields constitute a major problematic for anyone understanding sport management.
We have witnessed the disappearance of the meshed parts of the private boxes at the upper level of the Frankie Thomas Pavilion and the back of both the Michael Findlay and PH Veira Pavilions between the Cricket World Cup 2007 World Cup ‘goat cook’ matches and now, at the advent of the Cricket World Cup for this year.
Because we have important matches in this year’s T20 World Cup competition, we must finally repair the toilets downstairs the double-decker pavilion. That means it took almost 17 years for us to finally put the resources in place to appropriately address a matter of the public health of patrons and other users. This is the extent to which the authorities are capable of managing a sports facility. It must have been most embarrassing to all of the cricketing world that this is what sport in St Vincent and the Grenadines had become.
Imagine, that for all those years, the Ministry of Education had to rent portable toilets for patrons to the annual Inter Primary and Inter Secondary Schools Athletics Championships – 17 years.
The Diamond Sport Facility
On Saturday 6 January 2023, some coaches and technical officials experienced their worst fears. After months of complaining, it would appear that the absence of appropriate monitoring and evaluation of the synthetic surface is now clearly evident.
Since the surface was laid, the top and bottom turns have been areas where water collects following heavy rain. Over time, the failure to address this problem as led to the areas being home to moss.
A cursory visit to the Diamond Sport Facility, inappropriately called the Vincent Beache Stadium, would enable even the casual observer to recognise that the track is no longer wholly red, but almost black on the turns. This is the result of the coagulation of the moss.
On the 110m straight in front of the bleachers, there are areas where the surface appears to be ‘puffy’, suggesting that the material is lifting from the foundation in some parts.
Since the laying of the synthetic surface there has not been any official, systematic, scientific, analysis of the track by those who laid it down. One is left to wonder what was the agreement with the company involved and what warranties, if any, are involved?
If we are not careful, we could end up with a track that has been destroyed in short order.
The fact is that the matter of the laying of the track was placed directly under the Ministry of Planning. One questions the role of the Stadium Committee, led for many years by the late Garth Saunders.
Saunders was Chair of the Stadium Committee which had been involved, initially with TVA and later with ARUP, the latter having been originally invited to evaluate the work of the former. Neither Saunders nor anyone associated with the Stadium Committee back then ever ventured an appropriate response as to how this country engaged ARUP to evaluate TVA then ended up with a contract with the local authorities to do precisely what TVA was originally contracted to undertake.
When the surface at Diamond was being laid, Saunders informed this Columnist that he was not in any way involved as resigned his post as Chair of the Stadium Committee. He indicated then that the new approach completely ignored the years of work undertaken by his committee, not the least of which was that the designs should have been inside the fenced area rather than outside it.
Those with the ultimate responsibility for the track and Diamond, have missed the boat completely.
The bleachers should never have been on the home straight, to begin with. These have also been located much too close rot the competition arena. This is not a football only facility and in athletics, the idea is to locate facilities in appropriate places. The areas for the horizontal jumps are so close to the bleachers that the athletes’ performances are significantly compromised when engaged in the events hosted there. Competitors in these events are compelled to seek to enter and exit the pit as determined more by the location of the facility than by their preferential performance choices.
The bleachers are located where the main administrative and technical facilities are supposed to be located. Consideration has not been given to what is often considered normative in a national stadium. But here it all seems fine since those responsible have apparently assumed roles for which they are inappropriately qualified.
Indoor Sports
We may all recall the historical reality of years of pleading on the part of our Indoor sports, for appropriate national facilities. The pleading continues to fall on ‘deaf’ ears.
Table tennis, taekwondo, karate, netball, basketball and volleyball, are all sports usually played indoors. The reality is that basketball and netball, two of the nation’s most popular sports, have suffered because the athletes are injured from the hard surfaces on which they play – asphalt and concrete – in St Vincent and the Grenadines. These athletes find themselves with a very short competitive life span, much to their own detriment and that of the sport itself.
For decades leaders of the indoor sports have consistently pleaded with the governmental authorities for an appropriate indoor facility. Squash was fortunate enough to have been on location when the National Lotteries Authority (NLA) procured the Cecil Cyrus Squash Complex and afforded the association access to the courts. While the arrangement appears acceptable for the time, Squash needs its own facilities if it is to realise its own development strategy, going forward.
Table Tennis has been fortunate in having the Vincy Table Tennis Foundation (VTTF) provide funding so that the national federation has more than 100 tables in schools and other locations around the country. Thus gives the sport a major national presence and boost. The same VTTF has been able to provide financial support to several coaches, allowing for players to spend more hours practising the game under their watchful eyes.
Of course, the competition venues have been schools, for the most part. The need for the indoor complex is still on the cards.
While St Vincent and the Grenadines is surrounded by water, the only appropriate beach volleyball facility was created in Buccament, when the Buccament Bay Resort operated there. The facility is still in existence now that Sandals owns the hotel that has replaced what existed before. This means that, as happened before, the federation must rely on the well-being of Sandals and when the resort is not using the facility.
One would have imagined that with so many beaches, government’s sport authorities would have readily collaborated with the local federation to develop several beach volleyball facilities across the nation, including the Grenadines. Unfortunately, this has not been the case.
Synopsis
The Vincentian reality is that sport is not on the national development agenda of the government of the day. Instead, evidence seems to suggest that the government has been pursuing an approach to sport that is, at any given time, politically favourable. It is this policy that may best explain the otherwise inexplicable commitment of NLA funds to the construction and maintenance of sport facilities that are of a significantly better quality than those constructed and maintained by the NSC. Both arms of government do not appear to be on the same ‘wavelength’. This is the reason that government cannot speak about sport development in St Vincent and the Grenadines with any measure of confidence. The leadership seems incapable of understanding any role for sport in the Vincentian economy.
Our analysis here also explains why it is that we have no national honours but designate individuals, ‘sport ambassador’, with no clear articulation of precisely what this means and what those so designated are expected to do that would somehow impact Vincentian society.
