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Schools’ sport evolution depends on cultural transfiguration -NSBF provided further confirmation
By Edison Jefford
It is appalling that after its ninth year, the most important stakeholder of the superlative National Schools’ Basketball Festival (NSBF), the participating schools, are still grappling with whether or not and how they should support the nationwide competition.
Under normal circumstances, Cliff Anderson Sports Hall should have been filled last week with fans and supporters from the various schools represented from across the country. Unfortunately, that was not the case as the NSBF again struggled for support.
Saint Stanislaus College’s Akesi Cave completes a beautiful baseline play during the NSBF, but sadly his school was not there to see it, as evident from the relatively empty bleachers at the Cliff Anderson Sports Hall in this photo.
Over 40 schools participated in the competition in three categories, Under-14, 16 and 19, and the reaction from those schools to their teams competing in the national event is simply inexcusable and represents the continued demise of our national sports culture.
There is no explanation for the absence of St. Rose’s High School, for instance, to witness Coach, Courtney Taylor and the St. Rose’s team win the U-16 title. The phenomenon, however, was not only unique to St. Rose’s High; all the participating schools showed scant support for their teams.
It is not clear whether or not the coordinators of the NSBF, Youth Basketball Guyana (YBG) had gone through the right channels to garner support from the schools, which, one would imagine, include the Ministry of Education, but what is known, is that support from schools was minimal at best.
Each representative school should have had the backing of their school’s population at the venue over the course of last week. It used to be that way before this New Millennium. But while other countries have progressed with the change of epoch, Guyana has regressed.
New times have brought heightened expectations and performances in sport across the world that have forced advancement in sport administration, sport policy, sport medicine, schools’ sport and many other facets of sport, including marketing and branding.
Guyana is at the very basic plateau where Headmistresses and Headmasters of schools across the country have not shown any inclination of galvanizing respective institutions to show support for their sport teams unless the Ministry instructs them to do so.
And even when that instruction comes from the Ministry, there is a lukewarm response. So what is the problem? The absence of a national sports policy, which makes sport and its various facets constitutional with appropriate legislature, cannot be emphasised enough.
Whenever the Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport, Dr. Frank Anthony is asked about the sports policy that an international consultant was brought in to develop, he says that the national policy is being implemented, yet evidence of implementation opposes his view.
Guyana is in dire need of change in sports culture. Leaders must lead. Athletes representing their schools should not be sweating to bring their school honour in isolation. The institutional leaders and population of those schools should be offering full support.
It is understood that a large ‘turnout’, or crowd support, is not always a measure of success for an event, but it lends an immeasurable amount of credibility to performance when leaders are within the physical space of their sport teams to show solidarity.
It is one of the important reasons, for example, why German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, was in the dressing room of the German Football team before, and after, their World Cup Final. We will never know if her presence translated to the title for the Germans.
The Digicel Schools’ Football is still ongoing and there is an overwhelming show of support for the teams from schools in the hinterland regions. However, in the Cities the support fluctuates to sometimes ebb and flow, notwithstanding schools’ access to better resources.
We are back to a similar situation like the NSBF faced. Without the galvanising of schools from the top, there will continue to be poor responses. It is for Headmistresses and masters to wake up their schools to support their teams, which in effect, represent the school.
When a particular team wins, the entire school wins. There is urgent need for a renaissance from within the psyche of leadership from all academic institutions that has sport teams to begin to get alma mater, parents’ associations and mass student support for teams.
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