Major work needed before ‘going pro’
Increased commun-ication and greater synergies among stakeholders were the main talking points yesterday when the Young Democrats hosted a panel discussion on sports entitled, ‘Tek it Pro or Nah’.
With little turnout from the reportedly uninformed athletics community, Minister of Culture, Youth and Sports Stephen Lashley, Interim Chief Executive Officer of the National Sports Council Jerry Blenman, Ambassador Ryan Brathwaite and Barbados Olympic Association General Manager Glyne Clarke served as panelists as the heavy questions of if and how local athletes should chart their way forward as professionals.
Minister Lashley, who ultimately is the most influential man in sports locally, said that a complete overhaul of thinking, policies, protocol and legislation was necessary for any successful transitions.
“We have a limited amount of financial resources but we have to find the unifying factor to get our country, as a national objective to start focussing on the key sectors of sports. That is, where we are going to focus our energies on the National Sports Policy. And I think that as we finalise the National Sports Policy, which will then lead to the development of a separate piece of legislation, the Sports Development Act, we are essentially challenged with thinking of everyone in Barbados. The Cabinet’s thinking on sports will have to be challenged. The role of the critical ministries – for example; the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Social Care and the Ministry of Health. All of these ministries will be challenged in relation to their current thinking and then the new thinking that is required to deliver sports in Barbados at the level that I believe all Barbadians have been discussing for many years,” he said.
With respect to education, Lashley said that a different outlook was needed and that he believes that by now, two or three schools should have been earmarked to be institutions of sporting excellence and that such was necessary if sports is to seriously become a viable career path for future generations. He also said that the role of University of West Indies critical in alleviation of the red tape that has been ‘crushing’ sport on the island.
Going on to say that the financing of sports was also critical he said that reviews of how we manage the processing of incentives for sports and athletes was necessary. Noting that the current situation saw funding managed through Ministry of Finance with little to no involvement of the National Sports Council or Ministry of Sport, Lashley said that a change was most definitely needed there.
“That has led to a lot of bottlenecks in the system, has frustrated associations, has frustrated persons. We are going to have to change that dynamic. And all of that will have to be addressed within the context of how do we create a single vision, a new repurposing of sports that is nationally supported. And therefore, it will then be very easy to allocate in our national budgets enough funding and support to adequately maintain our facilities, support agencies such as the Barbados Olympic Association and utilise our lottery in a way that can certainly remove some of the issues that we have.”
With a question leveled about employment for former athletes, Lashley said that he believed that there needed to be a system in place that sought to make use of the expertise and experience of athletes who have represented the island in the past.
“The country that considers that sports is critical should not be afraid to say we will give employment or the opportunity to our sporting greats. But also, I would want to see distinguished athletes creating sporting businesses, whether by consultancies or otherwise and offering their services to Barbados and the rest of the world. I also want to be able to see sports generating foreign exchange for Barbados,” he said. (MP)