SVG needs to place more emphasis on erecting sporting facilities

This country’s first Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) player, Sancho Lyttle, says the only way this country will benefit from sports is if more emphasis is placed on erecting proper sporting facilities.

The 31-year-old Atlanta Dream power forward, who is here on vacation, expressed her view {{more}}at a media conference put on by the St Vincent and the Grenadines Basketball Federation last Friday, October 24.

According to Lyttle, other countries are investing heavily in various sporting disciplines and are excelling.

“If you know Jamaica, they are big in track. There are many new facilities there because that is what they are known for. Other countries as Grenada are now looking to push track because of Kirani James. He made a name for them,” she said.

Lyttle, who has been playing professionally in the United States and Europe since 2005, said this country’s basketball team recently participated in a tournament overseas and had to leave this country early in order to get accustomed to the court there.

“Why do we have to go to another country a week before so we can get accustomed to a court? If we have that same court, we could play more tournaments here and get our kids ready here; but we can, because I know for a fact that if I switch courts, it hurts. Going from concrete to a wooden floor or a wooden floor to concrete, it’s going to hurt every bone in your body,” Lyttle continued.

“Any sport that you have, you have to have the best facilities. If you have it, more people will come. You will see kids come out…,” she added.

First vice-president of the basketball association, Wayne Williams said initially they had looked at the possibility of going to various areas throughout the country to spread the game of basketball, but noted that with the state of the facilities here, it is impossible to have organized basketball played.

And according to the president, John Sutton, more needs to be done to improve the facilities here.

“As an executive, we have to start sensitizing the population of our talented players in the diaspora. I will not for a second excuse the Government for not knowing what’s happening in the different sporting disciplines. We have a Ministry of Sports and it is their responsibility to find out what’s happening with our players overseas and in general,” Sutton said.

He added that this country has a lot of talent and the most professional basketball players of any country in the Caribbean, but proper facilities need to be put in place to further development.

“I don’t think this country has a sporting facility of standard apart from the Arnos Vale Playing Field, to adequately say we are going to compete at the international level. We can’t compare to Jamaica, we can’t compare to what Trinidad and Barbados have done for their sport. Even with the sports we are successful at, we still don’t have top class quality facilities across the board,” he said.

“If St Vincent have a top 20 ranked football team at the international level, would we still be having Arnos Vale as our prime football facility? If that’s the case, then we seriously need to concentrate on our sport as being a means of alleviate some of the problems we have economically and it being an alternative source of revenue for the country… Sports has a tremendous potential of being a serious revenue earner and we got to start investing,” he said.

He said the executive would like to tap into their celebrity status in Europe and sensitize people in the sporting world to come to St Vincent as a sports tourism destination.(KW)