The Tribune

By FELICITY DARVILLE

ST Augustine’s College Alumni Association (SACAA) president Cherelle Cartwright rang me, all excited after seeing Brent Stubbs’ sports article announcing all five members of the 4x400 metre relay Olympic team for The Bahamas are St Augustine’s College (SAC) alumna.

Her excitement comes not only because they are representations of the greatness of their school and their country, but because they are women. Shaunae Miller-Uibo, Doneisha Anderson, Megan Moss and Anthonique Strachan were originally named for the team, and most recently, Lacarthea Cooper has been named alternate, to participate in the Olympics in Tokyo scheduled to begin in ten days time.

“For a long time, women have been overlooked for the role they have played in building up this country in every aspect of society,” she said.

“Here, we see five young ladies holding their own on an international stage. As women began to enter the fray in track and field, they upped the ante as they got out there and pursued their passion. As SAC students, I have watched these young ladies give their all on the track. They have opened the door for many behind them to show what these islands can produce. We are not even a million people in population and yet the calibre of athletes we produce is phenomenal!

“These five young women embody what SAC as an institution is all about – going out there, giving it your all, giving it your best. These ladies go fierce in competition, and it speaks to the legacy of our alma mater. We are built SAC tough; you have to respect the Red!”

Cherelle’s enthusiasm led me to contact the father of Megan Moss and Assistant Coach at SAC, Tito Moss, to find out how he was feeling. He coached all five ladies at SAC, but he also has coaching experience with them in the private athletic arena. I learned that he saw something special in each of them early on. I also was touched by the relationship he nurtured with his daughter, who showed athletic prowess from an early age, and whom he has watched blossom into the athlete she is today.

In the track club circuit, Tito coached Shaunae and Anthonique at Club Monica, where he served as Assistant Coach for nine years. Megan also started at Club Monica, before moving to Red Line Athletics, a club Tito launched in 2018. Megan and Lacarthea are current members of Red Line. As a SAC coach for the past 15 years, Tito has had the opportunity to directly coach Doneisha as well.

He gave me a glimpse into his experience with each of them:

Shaunae - “When I started coaching with Club Monica, Shaunae had already won her World Youth and was on her way to winning her World Juniors. At that point, she was already a gold medalist for Carifta. She was very focused, very poised, very humble, very quiet. She was already an elite athlete and you saw at that young age that she was going to be a standout athlete. She was in grade ten at the time, I think. Sure enough, she lived up to that.”

Anthonique - “Anthonique came to SAC in the ninth or tenth grade and did not finish, but in the three years she was there, she went from being just a great athlete to an outstanding athlete very quickly. She qualified for the Olympics while she was still in school and she did not finish SAC; she turned pro as an 11th grader. She was poised and hard working and just like Shaunae, I knew she was going to be uber talented, way out there and special... something you don’t see every day.”

Doneisha - “I was responsible for helping recruit Doneisha to SAC. I think she came from TA Thompson Junior High. She was running the 400, 800 and 1200 metres. I was very instrumental in getting her over to SAC. I did not coach her in the private system, but as a SAC coach, I saw that she was hard working, and I got a sense from early on that she would be special. I enjoyed working with her. She was a year ahead of my daughter, Megan. In 2017 when my daughter won her first Carifta gold, Doneisha got bronze. So, Doneisha and Megan kind of came up together, as did Shaunae and Anthonique.”

Lacarthia - “Lacarthia came to SAC from Freeport as a result of Hurricane Dorian. She told the school’s administration that whoever trained Megan Moss, that’s who she wanted to train with. She joined and has been working with me ever since – about two years now. She is just like a daughter to me. Some weekends, she stays with my family and I because her mom is from Freeport. She is focused and hard working and always wants to improve. In practice, she would want to work with the boys because she feels the girls are no push for her. Lacarthia is the youngest member of the relay team and the first athlete to make the Bahamas Olympic team having never been on a national team. She is presently in Costa Rica as a part of the NACAC under 18 team, and she qualified for every junior team.

Megan - “Megan is hard working, and she always knew what she wanted to do. She won gold in the under 17 category in Carifta. She broke Shaunae’s Carifta record in 400 metres – that record was special to her knowing it put her in the company of one of her role models which was Shaunae.

“Each of these young ladies exhibited characteristics of wanting to be better and do what is necessary to get to the next level. All are humble, but they always knew within themselves that they were talented. But they are all beasts on the track!”

Tito’s pride for his daughter’s athletic achievements made him reflect on the very first signs of talent she exhibited. Megan is his eldest child. He and his wife Nekeva are also parents to a son, Morgan, who is heading into the tenth grade at SAC, and Madison, their youngest daughter, who is entering the ninth grade at SAC.

“When Megan was three years-old, my wife and I were taking her to Blue Lagoon,” he recalls.

“We were sitting on the dock on Paradise Island waiting for the boat to come and take us to go over to Blue Lagoon. Megan was there on the dock playing by herself, saying, ‘Get mark, get set, go!’ And she would break off running the dock from end to end. I said to my wife, this girl is going to be an athlete. My wife was like, ‘Yeah, right’. Sure enough it turns out I was right. From a very young age, Megan exhibited the skills and talents of someone that we knew was going to be special. We also got that indication from her PE teacher in the fourth grade, Ms Demeritte at St Francis and Joseph. She said, ‘You need to get Megan into a programme. She beats all the girls and most of the boys save one or two.’ At that point we knew she was special.”

“Megan and I have always been close. She is my oldest and the first one to gravitate towards the sport of track and field. I would drop her to school and to practice, so we spent a lot of time together and we became very tight. We get along well. Whenever I coached with her and Club Monica and I saw things she needed to improve, I would ask Ms Woodside the Head Coach to communicate that to Megan, because I wanted to maintain the distance between father, daughter and coach. I didn’t want the roles overlapping. It was not until she was in the 11th grade that I started directly coaching her myself. I didn’t want us to be butting heads.

“Training for track and field is hard and you have to go hard at your athletes to really get them to buy in. So I waited until she got older to directly coach her myself. To this day we have a close relationship. When she went off to college, I would hear from her every morning and every evening. She is studying Health Sciences with a minor in Hospital Administration at the University of Kentucky. She wants to be a Paediatric Cardiologist. She still calls me the same way twice a day and this is her second year of college. When she competed in her first Carifta Games, we would go on Youtube and look up her competitors and watch their races to prepare a great strategy. Every race she did, I recorded it and as a family, we would sit and review it – whether she won it or not. The father, daughter relationship we share is special, and that is still true to this day.”

Megan and her teammates are about to compete in the Olympics with high hopes of bringing home the gold for The Bahamas.

For Tito, there’s a special place in his heart for all of them: “The Olympics is the pinnacle of our sport. To know that as a coach, I played a part in their development – albeit at varying degrees for these ladies, seeing them make the Bahamas Olympic team is overwhelming. For some of them, my involvement in them reaching the pinnacle spot was more involved than others, but it’s a great honour. It made me feel good as a coach to know I played a vital role. As a coach, I don’t believe I am responsible for their talent, but it is a calling of mine to be involved in coaching and to know I helped to shape, motivate and encourage all five of them at some point really is special for me.”

During my years at SAC, I remember watching Tito race and make us proud to be members of the Big Red Machine. He ran the 400 and 800 metres and was the best in his age group. He made the Bahamas Games national team, earning three golds and one bronze medal, making a record in the 800 metres. In addition to coaching at SAC, Club Monica and starting his own successful track club, Red Line Athletics with 75 athletes and counting, he was the Assistant Coach for the Central American and Caribbean (CAC) Youth Games in 2015. Two years earlier, he was certified as USATF level 1 and 2 coach in Track and Field and Biomechanics. in 2019, he was the Assistant Coach for the Bahamas team for the North American, Central American and Caribbean Games (NACAC) which travelled to Mexico.

He believes SAC has been a breeding ground for athletic greatness because from its early days, sports was an integral part of its programme. Tito told me SAC had the first track on the island of New Providence, before the Queen Elizabeth Track and Field Stadium was built. Kids who showed athletic prowess – and could also handle the rigours of the academic programme – gravitated towards the school. He also pointed out that just as Megan has become a better athlete than he ever was, many SAC alumni who showed great athletic promise during their days, sent their children to be a part of the same institution, “decade after decade, creating a legacy where talent has begat talent”.

“As SACAA President, I could not pass this opportunity to celebrate what the school has produced,” Cherelle told me.

“This has never happened in the history of our country! SACAA supports these ladies and gives them all the love and honour they deserve as we cheer them on to the Olympics!”