The Tribune

By BRENT STUBBS

Senior Sports Reporter

bstubbs@tribunmedia.net

BAHAMAS Association of Athletic Associations (BAAA) president Rosamunde Carey gave the management, coaching staff and the athletes of the BTC Bahamas team high marks for the way they performed at the 45th Carifta Games in St George’s, Grenada, over the Easter holiday weekend.

The team, managed by Mildred Adderley with Wendall Collie as the head coach, surpassed last year’s gold rush of three with five, but dropped from second to third place after Barbados picked up one more than the Bahamas. However, the team improved on last year’s medal haul of 31 with 33, including 15 silver and 13 bronze.

“With this team, we were pretty pleased with their performances,” said Carey in an interview with The Tribune. “We decided that again we were only going to go with qualifiers. There were one or two persons who were added for relay purposes, but generally we were pleased with their performances,

“A lot of them turned in their personal best so when an athlete PR, you really can’t ask for anything more from them. We were quite pleased with the way they performed.”

While the Bahamas wasn’t able to put a dent into the huge lead that separated the rest of the 20 countries from Jamaica, who rode off to their 32nd consecutive victory with 42 gold, 28 silver and 16 bronze for their total of 68, Carey said there’s still a lot of work that the local coaches have to do to ensure the country gets back up to par with their long-time arch-rivals.

“We have athletes who are with coaches and let’s use a high jumper for example. We have to get to a point where we allow those athletes certain times a week to go to a specialist coach,” Carey said. “We have to start thinking about country and its future and stop worrying about my club and my athlete and start thinking nationally.

“We are hosting Carifta in 2018 and so we now have to start thinking nationally and about the athletes’ well being. If you realise it, at all Carifta Games, you see any number of international coaches come to recruit so it’s important that our athletes are right up there so they can be recognised and get some of the athletic scholarships that are being offered.”

Carey also called upon the athletes to “go the extra mile” to ensure that they are properly prepared mentally and physically to be able to compete at this level of competition because although there were some outstanding performances, there’s still a lot more for them to do, considering the distances and times in between the medal winners.

As she’s fresh in the chair as the president, having being elected in November, Carey said her slate of officers were planning months in advance to get ready for the change in leadership.

“We had to change the view of the executives. We had to be people of integrity, people of character,” she said. “So when we say something, we have to make sure that we follow up so that people can understand where it is we are headed and the corporate sponsors have been very receptive to us.

“So what we want to do now is put in more rules and regulations and once issues come up, we can say this is the procedure. This is how it is supposed to work. For instance, we said that we were only going to take qualifiers and we stood by that. We took the additional people for relays.”

On all national teams, Carey said they will be looking at the way they select the athletes and they will be sticking to the requirements where there are qualifying standards set because they need to ensure that the athletes are aware that they must take their performances to the next level.

A prime example was the IAAF World Indoor Championships where a small team competed, based on their qualification. There were two others who were invited to compete, while there were a couple who didn’t make the trip to Eugene, Oregon after they qualified, but was injured.

Carey said it was disappointing that Michael Mathieu got disqualified for stepping on the line in the preliminaries of the men’s 400m, but he joined Shavez Hart, Alonzo Russell, Chris ‘Fireman’ Brown and Ashley Riley (who competed in the heats) in securing a silver medal behind the United States of America.

“We’re now finished with Carifta. We did will, thank God. Now we’re heading into the National High School Championships, we have the Age Group Championships, the Junior Nationals and the Senior Nationals all coming up before we go to the Olympic Games in August,” Carey stressed. “So it’s one project after the other.”

And during the NACAC Congress on Monday in Grenada, the Bahamas was awarded the bid to host the Carifta Games for the seventh time in 2018. The Bahamas previously hosted the top junior regional meet during the 5th version in 1976, the 7th in 1978, the 10th in 1981, the 13th in 1984, the 31st in 2002 and the 42nd in 2013.

“Before the Congress, Arnold Forbes, who represented the Minister of Youth, Sports and Culture met with the executives of NACAC and the presidents of the various associations, By the time, we got in and w canvassed the room, when the bidding process began, there were some countries who had planned to make bid, declined as we raised our hands. It was an unanimous decision.

“Now that we got it, the work starts today. We have to ensure that we do all of our ground work to make sure that these games will be the most memorable one ever hosted. Grenada said this one was the best. They did a great job, but we know that when it come to the Bahamas, we put on a first class event and we expect nothing less in 2018.”

The games are normally held over the Easter holiday weekend.