TATT boss eager to implement development plan

HAYDEN Mitchell, who was re-elected as president of the Tennis Association of TT (TATT) on Sunday, is eager for the implementation of a development plan, during his third term in office.

Mitchell was given the mandate to continue as TATT president, for another two-year spell, during the group’s elections at the National Cycling Centre, Couva on Sunday.

“We’ve be working towards a four-year development plan with the ITF (International Tennis Federation), which we’ll be executing,” Mitchell said, during an interview on Tuesday. “I think this is why people have the confidence to put us back in.”

Other members of the executive are Carlista Mohammed (secretary), Mignon King (public relations officer), Dwight Angus (assistant treasurer) and Dunstan Denoon (treasurer).

Mitchell said that the TATT is in constant talks with the ITF over the development plan.

“It all depends on the borders being open because (there) are teams that want us to host (some events) but we are very sceptical,” said Mitchell. “We have to be guided by the Ministry (of Health) and we told them that the earliest that we think anything can happen is in August, but then that’s also speculative.”

The TATT president pointed out, “We’re going to focus a lot internally, for the rest of this year. What we’re starting to do is work on community development and outreach programmes, where we go into communities and help introduce tennis. It’s not a mainstream sport like football. We want to introduce tennis and identify talent in those communities.

“We’ve already sent a proposal into the Ministry of Sport and Community Development, we’ve had meetings on it already and we’re now working on finalising that project. It’s a big project for us.”

Mitchell is hopeful that the local governing body can reignite tennis in south Trinidad.

“Petrotrin has something like 20 tennis courts throughout the southern part of Trinidad. When Petrotrin shut down, all those courts were closed. We’ve been in discussion with the chairman of Petrotrin, Michael Quamina, for use of those facilities once again and assigning them to clubs. That’s part of our whole development plan and the community development project that we want to do.”

Another focus of TATT will be constitutional reform. “We’re finalising our committee for that,” said Mitchell.

Tennis in Tobago is another area that Mitchell will be looking at.

“There is a lot of potential, with the tennis courts, there (are) lots of opportunities to do private/public partnerships in Tobago for both tennis development and beach tennis, which is something we’ll be introducing. We think Tobago is ideally suited for it. That’s what we’ll be focussing on, at least for 2021.”

In 2022, Mitchell would like to see international events staged in TT.

“We’re focusing on getting the facilities certified by the ITF,” he added. “The (National Racquet Centre) in Tacarigua is 85 per cent (ready). The Sports Company just signed off on a couple things last week. Once that goes through, we would just need to bring in the personnel. We have to do some internal structuring of it and then we’re hoping, by the end of this year, we could have there as an ITF-certified training facility.”

How was tennis affected by the covid19 lockdown last year?

Mitchell replied, “The first couple months of the lockdown was hard. During the lockdown, our organisation had a lot of online activities. We used the team to set up our coaching team. The ITF has an online university which a lot of our coaches signed up for. They were able to conduct and execute courses during (that) period which is great.

“Yes, it posed a problem, but it also had opportunities for us. Because we were (one of the first) to get our sport up and running, we saw an uptake in people playing tennis across TT.”