Belize Amateur Athletic Association inactivity affects students

Former Vice President of the Belize Amateur Athletic Association, Deon Sutherland, is tonight speaking out against what he describes as the inactivity of an interim committee chartered with moving sports forward.  Since being elected in June of last year, Sutherland charges that the executive has done very little to improve and promote the sport of track and field.  With the upcoming CARIFTA Games drawing nearer, student athletes, according to Sutherland, want to know if they will be returning to the competition to defend their records.

Deon Sutherland, Sports Enthusiast

Deon Sutherland

“For the past year, nine months to a year now we have been very stagnant as it relates to track and field.  In terms of development, in terms of program, in terms of facility I believe that it’s time we looked at the results of the Central American Games earlier this month and look at the past results of the games that we have gone to and we could see the difference, I mean, in terms of lack of preparation.  In terms of not having any program, in terms of not having the proper facility.  And again I believe it is my endeavor to see the powers that be, both public and private, to look into the state of affairs in terms of athletics.  Right now I must say that we are nowhere.  We are nowhere because the past executive was dissolved in June and since then I don’t know what the new interim executive has in store but I’m hoping that they will come up with something very quickly because the regional track and field season has started.  As a matter of fact, we know the CARIFTA Games come up sometime in the next two weeks and I don’t know if we’ll be having any representatives.  But what the fact is, the regional games have started and I am saying that we need to represent in these things.  We have record holders, we have gold medalists and we want to know if our athletes will go back to defend these titles.  And so it’s a matter of getting into the swing and I think the athletes themselves want to know, “What are we working for?  What are we doing in terms of athletics?”  Because, you know, that is basically, we say football is our number one sport but when it comes to athletics that is something we can excel because it’s not a team sport, so it doesn’t require a whole lot and we have athletes.  We have raw talented athletes but of things are not structured for them to develop then that would be the result.”

Despite the completion of the race track at the Marion Jones Sporting Complex, the National Sports Council is yet to formalize the usage of the facility for the training of young athletes.