WITH the completion of the National Schools’ Cycling, Swimming and Track and Field Championships,the lingering question is what’s next for these sports in the schools as well as for individual athletes who have shown potential.
Towards that end, at least in the field of athletics, president of the Athletics Association of Guyana (AAG)Aubrey Hudson, said that the Association is working along with the Guyana Teacher’s Union and Ministry of Education (MoE) to have every secondary school in the country registered with the Association.

According to Hudson,when systems are put in place to foster a better relationship between the schools and the AAG,it will put the Association in a better position to look at the welfare of the students.
“We are in touch with the school system,” Hudson said, continuing that: “We are on a drive right now to register every secondary school as members of the AAG, because we feel a need for them to be represented, and (we’ll) try to sit with the Guyana Teacher’s Union (GTU) and the Ministry of Education(in) creating the interest in track and field and ensuring that every school has a physical education teacher with at least a basic knowledge of track and field.With that even if they (the athletes) are far away from a club but they have an active school’s track and field program then we can more be in touch with them, and whenever we have meets we can ensure that they are invited.”

Hutson added that the Association is looking at outlying areas outside of Georgeotown, and the initiative has already begun to roll out on the East Coast of Demerara.
“To take the whole country in one grasp it’s going to be too difficult. We’re working primarily on the East Coast right now, and once we would have covered there, we’re going to move to the West Coast, West Bank and East Bank.
“Linden and Georgetown are, I don’t want to say taken care of, but most of the athletes in these areas are in clubs, so we’re really looking at the outlying areas immediately outside of Georgetown, and then we’ll go to Berbice and so on.” Hudson related.
The AAG recently assisted the East Coast Demerara, District 4, team to train on the highway for the recently concluded Nationals.

The Asosciation is working on its relationship with the varying authorities that run the school system, Hutson noted, to improve on the overall Championships as well.
“We’re really and truly massaging our relationship with the GTU and the Ministry (of Education) and I think every year it is getting better and better. We’re changing our approach and we’re gently bringing to board the things that we think are going to make the Championships better.”

Working along with the organisers the AAG provided the Fully Automatic Timing (FAT) system to record timings at the Championships this year, the first time that the system was in use at this event. Through this the AAG can now sanction timings clocked at the meet.
“The mere fact that we are going to authenticate their performances, we can use those performances now as a yardstick to judge when requests are made to us for athletes of a particular talent for let’s say for scholarship then we can say yes these are authentic performances.” Hutson relayed.