UTT, TTFA sign historic MOU on sport development

Trinidad and Tobago's current crop and future generation of footballers stand to benefit from Tuesday’s signing of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the TT Football Association (TTFA) and the University of TT (UTT).

The historic agreement allows national youth, senior players and staff an opportunity to access all of UTT’s facilities and programmes to help better understand, nurture and elevate their skills.

At the UTT campus in Charlieville, senior manager, sport and recreation, Ian Pritchard outlined an array of the university’s options for footballers, which they can tap into to become more all-round, multi-faceted players.

Pritchard said the MOU had been long coming and aims not only to elevate TT’s footballing progress but also aid players’ academic development.

He said the university is being projected as the number one research centre for sport and sport development in TT. UTT has a centre for kinesiology, physical education and sport where everything is centred on sport development.

Pritchard forecast its benefits to local football.

“At UTT, we have nutrition and sport performance, psychology and how it affects and impacts performance of athletes, ethical values in sport, research and sport science, in terms of getting athletes to perform at their optimum,” he said.

Pritchard also highlighted the rehab centre, led by Adrian Palmer, and UTT’s strength and condition co-ordinators. Additionally, its high-performance athlete development programme serves as a platform for young footballers to balance sport and academics at UTT.

“What we are saying to TTFA in our MOU is that your U-15, U-17 and U-19 teams have the possibility of engaging in continuous education at the university, where they can be trained and housed together, hopefully at the Home of Football.

“That development and working together in an environment like that can always be beneficial to the development of those young footballers who will be the talent of the future generation of TT football. Our facilities are open to you, our research facility, classrooms and staff.”

Pritchard also said there was ongoing discussion of a programme which entails a series on leadership coaching that will be launched at the UTT.

TTFA normalisation committee chairman Robert Hadad expressed elation at the MOU signing and said the future of TT football is in good hands, after three years of the TTFA enduring an administrative “category-five hurricane.”

“The magnitude of this situation is quite overwhelming for me. It’s no secret that in three years in this role, it was very difficult to see the sky and sun. But today, peeping through the clouds I see a bright future for all of us, for sport and football in TT.

“Partnering with the UTT is going to be amazing, and the opportunities are endless. For us, it’s really what UTT has brought to us. We are very excited (about) what the future would bring. Working alongside UTT is going to be tremendous. Keep supporting football and this partnership.”

Chairman of UTT’s board of governors Clement Imbert said athlete rehabilitation remains top priority. UTT is in talks with other stakeholders to increase its reach in this department.

“One of the main pillars in the building of an athlete is the question of rehab. It’s very important because athletes are subject to injury, but also the stresses the muscles undergo. We can have specific programmes in that area at whatever level, whether post-grad or the certificate, that would train people in that specific area.

“That is one of the areas that I see that we need to broaden in terms of providing a holistic development for our athletes.”

Imbert confirmed that UTT will soon be offering, for all sporting disciplines, training for pre-participation assessors. This, he said, would identify, correct and reduce short- and long-term injuries, particularly in new athletes.

“What we have is a lot of young athletes entering sport without any pre-participation examination done, or any testing. We believe that leads to a lot of injury to our athletes, some of which are unable to be corrected later on.

“We would be training these people (assessors) so that (at) those first points of contact with athletes, we’d be able to do the testing and be able to tell if they are ready to participate; if not, what injuries they might be susceptible to. That’s another layer of support that the TTFA can tap into that’s being offered at the UTT.”

UTT president Prakash Persad believes technology also plays an integral role in helping improve TT’s footballers. He wants both the TTFA and UTT to begin working on technologically advanced equipment to aid their individual and overall progression as athletes.

“Can we develop some specific training equipment for footballers? Because we have done so for cricket. We are developing a fast-bowling machine and a variety of things. In terms of training, we can look at that.

“We’ll put a mixed team comprised of engineers and sporting people, where we can develop this equipment and test it. Hopefully it will be jointly marketed by UTT and TTFA worldwide. This is something we want to do and we look forward to it.”

Also at Tuesday’s MOU signing were TTFA normalisation committee general secretary Amiel Mohammed and technical director Anton Corneal, UTT’s cricket instructor and former West Indies bowler Tony Gray, 12-time national champion and table-tennis coach Aleena Edwards and another governor, Michael Cooper.