National Youth Games this year

A NATIONAL Youth Games will be inaugurated this year, according to  Minister of Sport and Youth Affairs Roger Boynes. These Games will be a three-month-long league tournament featuring windball cricket, small-goal football, basketball and netball events, to be held throughout the country.

This disclosure was made by Minister Boynes during the WITCO Sports Foundation Awards 2002 ceremony at Trinidad Hilton on Thursday night last. The Minister added that the tournament “targets employed and specifically, unemployed youth, leaving them no time for crime while fostering community spirit and involvement.” The Minister was also adamant that a Trinidad and Tobago Boxing Board will soon be appointed, while his Ministry will stage a number of symposiums to ensure institutional strengthening, both in boxing and basketball. Another strategy proposed for the year is Sport Plus, a sport training vocational and academic programme which targets youths between the ages of 15 and 25.

Those plans, according to Boynes, will see the Caribbean Sport Academy establishing Trinidad and Tobago as a premier sporting hub in the region and, by extension, the world. With regard to the Ministry’s bilateral agreement with Cuba which offers support for boxing and volleyball, Boynes revealed that track and field will be added to the mix. In addition to the seven persons currently pursuing studies in Physical Education and Sport, “four more persons under the age of 25 will soon be selected to join those already in Cuba as we (the Ministry) aggressively increase the pool of trained persons to lead sport in the future in Trinidad and Tobago.” And the five football stadia, Hasely Crawford, Mucurapo; Larry Gomes,  Arima; Ato Boldon, Couva; Manny Ramjohn, Marabella; and Dwight Yorke, Bacolet, Tobago, will be heavily utilised during the next three years.

Boynes stressed that “through the ministry’s football development programme, which will be conducted in collaboration with all major partners, Trinidad and Tobago will become, once more, the football capital of the region.”