‘Vision-less’ administrators stymie VI’s sports development—Dean H. Greenaway. Photo: Facebook

The Sportsman’ recently gave his views during his guest appearance on radio programme, ‘Diamond Digging: A Look at VI History.’ Photo: Facebook

Kyron A. McMaster has succeeded "but it can happen in other sport (disciplines)…it is possible but there has to be that vision,” said Dean H. Greenaway. Photo: VINO/File

This, he believes, has stymied the development of sports across the various disciplines engaged in the Territory.

‘The Sportsman’ recently gave his views during his guest appearance on radio programme, ‘Diamond Digging: A Look at VI History’ with host, Ms Maureen Peters.

Lamenting the state of affairs with regards the retarded development of some sports disciplines in the Territory, Greenaway said, “…you must have a vision, (and) a structure and then keep driving it home in people’s head that hey, this can happen…Kyron has succeeded but it can happen in other sport (disciplines)…it is possible but there has to be that vision.”

The VI sports veteran was adamant “…many of our sports administrators lack that vision and they don’t realise that if you are the president of a sport, you are responsible for the development of everybody in that sport (in) what you try to introduce.”

Mr Greenaway said, “the thing with sports what a lot of people don’t understand, it starts with the administration and the vision of the administrator, many of our administrators do not understand that component.”

Project Podium 

Mr Greenaway noted that he had sometime back proposed the ‘Project Podium’ initiative, which had identified that within five years, “I would like to see us win a medal in an area where we have never won a medal.”

That should have been this year—2018—but the project never came to fruition.

He explained, that it was envisioned, "all the athletes between 10 and 14, who would be 16 to 17, between 2015 and 2018, I pool them.”

According to Greenaway, “by pooling them they were lined up with every competition that we go to, now by extension, it lined up every athlete—through the senior athletes—so whenever there was a competition, I know who the pool of athletes were that we would draw on, who would be able to be competing for medals.”

The programme was never introduced and according to Mr Greenaway, VI athletes recorded a number of near misses and few successes in few disciplines, prior to a McMaster’s stellar performances.

More Medals

“It was a vision that was created, Project Podium, to get our athletes on the podium…we need to have more people making semi-finals, we need to have more people getting in the finals” he said.

The plan, according to Greenaway, was presented to the BVIOC, “but they were more interested in getting me out of the Olympic Committee because, I ain’t the usual yes man, you know.”

He posited, “…if you look at your athletes from the time they are eight years old, the people who are in your pool, and you started pooling them throughout all our sports, we would be having (medals) not just in track and field but in a variety of sports.”

Were such a strategy to be incorporated, according to Greenaway, “you would be seeing a level of development (but) that type of vision doesn’t (currently) exist.”