The Tribune

By TENAJH SWEETING

Tribune Sports Reporter

tsweeting@tribunemedia.net

The Red-Line Athletics Track Club is gearing up to host its fifth annual Motivational Health and Wellness Seminar along with a free sprints and relay clinic this weekend.

The events are geared towards “Building Holistic Champions” and will begin with the free sprints and relay clinic from 4.30pm to 6.30pm today at the original Thomas A Robinson Stadium.

The free clinic will be hosted by three-time Olympic medallist Debbie Ferguson-Mckenzie.

The clinic will be followed by a motivational health and wellness seminar on Saturday at the University of The Bahamas Auditorium from 9am to 3pm. 

The seminar will be spearheaded by a wide range of panelists covering a multitude of topics beneficial to student-athletes. 

Red-Line Athletics head coach Tito Moss expressed the importance of the annual seminars as it relates to helping the athletes to take that next step on the track or field.

“The importance of it is definitely to expose the kids to professionals who have done it at the highest levels who can actually help them a little more and make a difference in a kid that is a sprinter going from 10.70 to 10.60 because he is executing better out of the blocks. The reason why we put on the seminar is to just to work on those technical stuff and let them hear it from the experts who have done it and at one point were there and even in high school trying to make their mark,” Moss said.

The sprints/relay clinic will cover a wide range of skills including block starts, sprinting techniques, visual and non-visual passes for the 4x100m and 4x400m events.

On the following day, the panel will include speakers such as Dr Kent Bazard, Ferguson, Patrice and Dewey Taylor (parents of Olympian Charisma Taylor), along with Lakeisha Bowles.

The panelists will cover a wide range of topics such as post workout nutrition, division one recruitment efforts, sacrifices and rewards of being a sports parent and financial literacy.

“One of the things that is important to us and is in our mandate we have in Red-Line is we cater to the whole child. We are holistic in our approach to the child’s development and that is the reason we do a lot of the things that we do. Before we coach that child athletically, we need to be able to reach them as coaches. These seminars are just bridges along the way in helping us to achieve the goal of raising and being more effective in reaching our student-athletes…Sometimes hearing it from us coaches who they see everyday is one thing but hearing it from professionals, from another Olympian or coach hits differently and that’s why we continue to put on these seminars,” he said.

Bahamian Olympic bronze medallist Leevan “Superman” Sands spoke on college recruitment and athlete’s self accountability at last year’s seminar.

He also hosted a jumps clinic in his efforts to give back.

The two-day event is open to athletes from all track clubs from ages 13 to under-20.