Joseph takes another look at athletics organization

Keith Joseph, president of Team Athletics SVG, the local body which heads track and field, has called on the constituents of the sport to do an internal personal audit, by setting higher standards.{{more}}

Giving remarks at his organization’s annual awards ceremony, held at Frenches House last Saturday, Joseph pronounced forcefully: “I have a problem when year after year, we ask that our ceremony be a formal affair, but people don’t seem to get it….

“Because our representatives travel abroad and I would shudder to think that any representative of Team Athletics (SVG) will dare to go abroad and invited to a formal affair and not know what it means.

“I am saying to us here, we have standards to set and we need to set our standards and maintain them. … If we are not prepared to do it, let us go and do something else…. We could go and plant peas in the garden.”

Joseph advocated that such standards should be instilled in the young as, “We cannot bend the tree when it is old; we have to bend it when it is young.”

Zooming in on the components of the sport, with its branches being the athletes, parents, coaches, administrators and sponsors, Joseph cautioned coaches that their attempts to develop their athletes, who are the most important pillar, must be done in tandem with their parents.

Addressing the parents, Joseph declared, “The child is yours and you cannot abdicate that responsibility as a parent, no matter how well meaning and how well intentioned is the coach … If he is not prepared to let you know what he is doing every time he is with your child, forget him and find another route for the child’s development…. It must be done in tandem with you and the knowledge of the association.”

Touching on the ingredients, Joseph pointed out that in St Vincent and the Grenadines, coaches are themselves administrators of clubs, but he re-emphasized: “the two are not the same, so we are saying to those who control our clubs and our teams to get it together and find administrators and train them appropriately to play their roles… You cannot do both, no matter how well intentioned you are.”

And, in keeping with the practice of setting standards, Saturday’s ceremony, which was advertised to commence at 3 p.m., began promptly at that time.

The ceremony was held under the theme: “Towards Sustainable Athletics in SVG.”