SPORT LIGHT
By Anthony De. Beauville

A Revolutionary Change Needed in Sports in St.Lucia

As anything in life, many will agree that sports exist to provide interested children a positive and enjoyable recreational experience. With my experience, a lot has shown me that children who participate in sports have higher self-confidence, are healthier, perform better in school and are less likely to get involved in drugs than children who do not participate in sports.
Unfortunately these positive experiences and outcomes are overshadowed by an increasingly hostile environment that’s ultra competitive, highly pressured and often encourages and rewards a win-at-all-costs approach. Of late sports in St.Lucia has become a hotbed of chaos, violence and mean-spiritedness. Violence to some might just be too harsh of a word but in reality that is simply the truth.
I see it at our Interhouse School Sports meet organized by the various schools - the physical and emotional abuse of children, where one individual has to compete in 5 events in a four hour sports meet in one given day to chalk up points on the board for their respective house. Then, you have others more than capable of participating just simply roaming or sitting enjoying the day off away from the class room.

Cheating and total disrespect for opponents and officials are but two instances of unacceptable behaviour. This disgraceful behaviour has polluted our sports landscape and poisoned the fun we used to have. At the end of it all, we are left with distorted child development, broken hearts, crushed dreams and shattered psyches.
So many questions remain unanswered, and this one is no exception. Should every community have a certified sports administrator? Sounds far fetched? As I travel from community to community across the island, I am seeing an undisclosed number of inefficiencies in sports and one of them is leadership. Our sports has fallen victim to lack of leadership and our sportsmen and women are suffering. By the look of things presently, one can safely say that a number of the sports programs in the various communities are operated by persons who want to either compromise policies, simply holding the fort with no requirements at all not even to run a club with 12 individuals to start with.
The time has come where we as a nation need to take back our sports, and put the fun back into it. There is need for policies and requirements that prohibit the physical and emotional abuse of children which must be in place in each school and community, and they must be strictly enforced. This begins by commanding leadership skills.
As the eyes see it, I strongly believe the way forward is to equip each community with a certified sports administrator to ensure that the sports program implemented by the various sports federations and clubs are run smoothly. The onus is now on the various sports federations on the island, the Department of Youth and Sports along with their field officers if they are serious to ensure that the above mentioned is professionally administered.

I can recall in the past year, a number of sporting federations hosted Sports Administrators courses for their members. Heading that list was the St.Lucia Olympic Committee under the banner of Olympic Solidarity funding, the St.Lucia National Cricket Association,and the St.Lucia Athletics Association. Sad to say but the St.Lucia Basketball Association tried one at the NIC conference room however stakeholders failed to show up on the day just to name a few; not forgetting the countless symposiums by the Department of Youth and Sports, the last one held at Palm Haven Hotel and most times their invitees as usual have been the wrong set of individuals.
The question is where have all of these certified sports administrators gone to? I’m still there and I know of a few who are still championing the cause of sports. The role here as a certified sports administrator is to work closely with your respective association and affiliates to improve on the quality of the product that we have in abundance in St. Lucia.
The list can go on, but this one steals the icing on the cake - the use of community facilities. It’s an eye sore because the issues are much greater than we think. We in St.Lucia are blessed with a number of sporting facilities all over the island and one may challenge that, but that’s a fact. Tell me when Mr. Vandalism takes charge who is to blame, me? Really. One facility that comes to mind is the James Belgrave Sports Complex next to the Marchand Grounds. Opened on Sunday 29th August 1989, exactly 19 years later it’s no longer in use in a community overflowing with talent of all sorts.
So, are there policies and who is there to ensure that the rules and policies are clearly understood, and that deviating from them will not be tolerated in any way? The person responsible should also be equipped to include providing information and resources to enhance the sports experience for not just children, but adults, in whatever their respective roles may be. We must not make the mistake and believe a security personal at the facility is a sports administrator.
In our daily life pattern it appears that our intention is to destroy, so to safeguard the little that is still functioning, every group that applies to use the community’s facilities should be required to go through a brief educational program that addresses the importance of sports in a child’s development, and what the behaviour expectations are for the adults, whether coach, official, or simply a spectator - because when we destroy we are simply depriving that child an opportunity.
The Beijing Olympics were certainly a pleasure to watch. Now is the time for each community in this country that we call home to step up and recognize that there is an urgent need for a revolutionary change towards sports in St.Lucia if we are to be serious contenders in London in 2012. Oops, I challenge you to produce just one within. Then the rest is easy sailing.