Stop passing the buck

As the calendar year 2015 comes to a close, it is not too early to begin to reflect and take a drone shot on the sporting landscape of St Vincent and the Grenadines.

Generally, there were some satisfying returns by our national representative teams in cricket, football and squash, while tennis, swimming and track and field kept their heads above water, with some individual efforts.{{more}}

However, the achievements on the field of play were not commensurate in many of the administrative structures of the respective national sporting bodies.

Thus, the reasonable efforts attained by those who stood out, in the main, should not be totally aligned with the policies of the national associations.

Save and except for the Swimming Association, many failed to come up to trumps, and thus left behind some unfinished tasks.

Those who have missed the mark, unfortunately, are not man or woman enough to look at him or herself in the mirror and take responsibility and the inevitable blame. The escape route then is traversed and dumping off of their shortcomings is laid at the feet of others.

Often too, others choose to blame the hiccups, inefficiencies and sometimes poor administrative decisions on the lack of finance or facilities.

A case in point is the fact that St Vincent and the Grenadines does not possess a synthetic track, which can be directly related to some levels of nonchalance towards track and field.

Whilst there is some merit to this argument, one cannot always rest the debate on non-existence of a track. Equally important is the tenacity needed by the administrators of the sports and that greater will to move our young athletes to the next phase of their development.

This is not always a chicken and the egg scenario, as once that recognition is attained, then the powers that be will have to take note and compensate with the necessary infrastructural development.

It is a similar type of lethargy which is seeing our netball fade into a form of recreation, rather than a sport that can be used not only to improve the physical being, but the personal and lifestyle chances of our young women.

The concocted excuse then pops up that the young womenfolk lack discipline and are not receptive to coaching, correction and the likes.

This is the quick fix which is the getaway when there are no programmes created to ensure that the same young females are cultured and structured in the sport.

But the buck stops with those vested with the posts of charting the sport to safe havens and harvest grounds.

Successive administrations have not instituted a continuous feeder programme, namely a grassroots type undertaking, which introduces the young females to the sport in a fun way.

Reliance on the primary and secondary schools’ competitions and the age group set-ups in the various communities are not enough and are merely fillers.

Whilst useful and welcomed activities, they simply satisfy the immediate objective, that of having some form of competitive netball.

Thus, the slide in the sport has become accepted as the norm, as not many persons are showing enough concern to take us out of the rot.

We are satisfied with a annual national club tournament; the multitude of area competitions, which are the blood transfusion for the ailing sport; and our participation in the OECS Under-23 and Caribbean Netball Association Under-16 tournaments.

The other sporting disciplines are not immune to this type of attitude and issues and are in the same boat and on the same course as the others.

Our national associations, even though well-meaning, sustain themselves by keeping the status quo intact, by doing just enough to keep their discipline going.

There is always a reason why we cannot strive for more than what we are getting, as the junk food of limited success has bloated our egos.

Therefore, the unanswered question still lingers; do most of our sports administrators really understand their roles and responsibility?

Do these administrators really believe that we can extract more from them and from the charges that they are appointed to lead?

On the other hand, are our sportsmen and women in acknowledgement that they too have to play their part in maximizing their own efforts and subsequently demand more from those who guide them?

Whenever these are responded in the affirmative, then sports in St Vincent and the Grenadines can get out of the blocks and tear down the track.