Rodrigues to formalise HYSC this week

Jan 11, 2011 Sports

– serious approach for hinterland athletes

By Edison Jefford

With the view of providing a structured, systematic and coordinated approach toward securing an enlightened future for athletes from the hinterland communities, the Hinterland Youth and Sports Committee (HYSC) is expected to be formalised later this week.
The initiative is the brainchild of former Youth Representative of Region Nine, Mark Rodrigues, who has since attracted major stakeholder support for the project inclusive of the National Sports Commission and the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports.
Speaking with Kaieteur Sport yesterday, Rodrigues said that a meeting will be convened with the view of having the HYSC fully operational before weekend. He said that initially he will propose to be elected head of the Committee until it is thoroughly constituted.
“I have been given the support to become the President of the Committee. It is not a position that I would like to hold on to because I believe a younger and more vibrant person would be best for this Committee, but for now, I would be in charge,” Rodrigues said.
The primary goal of the Committee is to represent sportsmen and women from hinterland regions in an effort to facilitate the realisation of their full potential. Rodrigues is of the view that there is an obvious lack of such representation for athletes in those regions.
“It is my belief that much more can be done for youths of the hinterland. I feel the time has come to put together a Committee to enable more representation for our athletes so that they’ll have an equal opportunity as their coastland counterparts,” he indicated.
To achieve his goal, Rodrigues informed that the HYSC will host a series of programmes relative to sports and youth development in an attempt to showcase the talent of the hinterland region and thereby convince stakeholders that the project is consequential.
“At this time when our youth population in the hinterland is becoming vulnerable to some of the most deadly scourges to ever plague and threaten our communities, it seems unthinkable that lots more is not being done to help our talented youths,” he lamented.
“Our youths in the hinterland can attain some form of recognition through sports, but there is lots more that needs to be done,” Rodrigues continued, adding that in most cases, because there is not a serious input from a serious group, successful athletes end up producing negative results.
He informed that there are cases where successful athletes from the hinterland were impregnated and migrated across the border; ended up consuming high quantities of alcohol; ended up with an incurable disease and basically threw their good careers to the wind.
Rodrigues thinks that in most cases those negative results were as an effect of lack of systematic guidance and management, which he says the HYSC hope to deliver with the view of giving lots of attention to prominent athletes who hail from the hinterland regions.
“Despite the many hardships and difficulties encountered by these young, aspiring athletes, some passionately continue, but struggle to upkeep themselves under unfavourable conditions. Most of them end up succumbing to the hardship of life in the hinterland and their talents are lost forever. This committee want to end this phenomenon,” Rodrigues told this newspaper.
He said that a lot of athletes from the hinterland communities dominate whenever a chance arises for them to travel to the coastland to compete. However, when they return to the hinterland, most of them teeter out because of inactivity within their communities.
“The main reason (for them teetering out) is the prohibitive costs to allow the athletes to compete in events on the coast on a regular basis. As a result they’re marginalised from the mainstream of competition with little or no recognition from the sport fraternity,” he said.
Rodrigues indicated that that is the background behind the formation of the HYSC which has had two meetings before this week’s forum where a full executive is expected to emerge. He said that he hope the Committee is a positive step forward for hinterland athletes.