The National Sports Commission (NSC) annual Awards ceremony and the second Sport Conference could be held in January 2023, Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport, Charles Ramson Jr. has indicated.
The NSC Awards ceremony was last held in May 2019 for outstanding performances of 2018, while the historic Sport Conference was first held in October 2021.
At those awards in 2019, Basketball standout Stanton Rose Jr. and Table Tennis champion girl Chelsea Edghill, now an Olympian, were named Senior Sportsman and Woman respectively.
On the Junior side, Badminton’s female marquee player Priyanna Ramdhani and Squash prodigy Shomari Wiltshire were recognised for their on-court brilliance.
There have been suggestions in some quarters that the awards be held at the end of year under consideration.
However, Minister Ramson Jr. believes that would be unfair to the associations that still have activities in December, which could potentially be overlooked in the planning stages of the awards.
“It should be early in the following year, but I don’t think it should be for that year,” Minister Ramson Jr. stated.
He added, “Yes, we will have the awards. Internally, we are setting it for January because we still want to do the Sport Conference.”
According to the Minister, “The Sport Conference is a useful mechanism for us to do the awards and discuss how we are going to continuously improve and make an assessment of how the academies are working, where are failures and implement the strategies and programmes on how to improve it.”
After the inaugural Sport Conference in 2021, the focus was shifted to the implementation of the first-ever Sport Academy in the country.
The Sport Conference featured four panel discussions involving the 12 core disciplines, touching on a range of topics related to sport development.
The panel discussions touched on Governance, Nurturing Talent, Mindset, Revenue, Sponsorship, Media, Nutrition, Injuries, Psychology, Tournaments, Elite Training and International Competition.
Representatives of the other associations were also in attendance at the National Cultural Centre.
The Sport Academy, which importantly, is a programme and not a building, will centre around three pillars- Nursery, Tournaments and Elite Training Academy.
The core sports currently identified by the Ministry are: Badminton, Basketball, Cricket, Squash, Table Tennis, Rugby, Volleyball, Swimming, Football, Tennis, Hockey and Track and Field.
