Samuda wants annual trials for all sports

President of the Jamaica Olympic Association (JOA),Christopher Samuda, has plans for each of the different sporting disciplines that fall under the body’s purview to have national trials each year to select teams for international duties.

According to Samuda, this will be among the objectives that he will structure the JOA to implement in an attempt to broaden the reach of the body, while also positively impacting athletes of the different sporting associations.

“Those trials are treated as matriculation to the international games and that’s part and parcel of building a professional sports industry, where every sport has national trials every year, where it is competitive, a pool of persons who know that they have to do their best to qualify for the international games.

“We would want to see greater participation in the respective sports in terms of athletic contribution,” Samuda said.

Only a small group of sporting disciplines currently have annual trials, with the Jamaica Athletics Administrative Association (JAAA) being the main purveyor, as teams for various international competitions are selected from the National Senior and Junior Championships, more popular called ‘Trials’.

According to Samuda, the trials for the different sporting disciplines are included in the JOA’s short-term goals, which would also involve adequately funding these organisations for material progress.

He admitted these are big goals, especially in a weak and unstable Jamaican economy, with the economic demands of the sporting associations not being met by the available sponsorship dollar.

“Yes, we want to be able to fund them handsomely, but we know that that will be a herculean task given the macroeconomy and also given the realities of the sports industry,” Samuda said.

He was, however, adamant that with proper planning and improving the image of the JOA, funds will be generated into the kitty to offset the cost to achieve these objectives.

“We have to expand the corporate revenue base and that is what we have been doing and of course, there is a greater opportunity where that is concerned. It’s a question of building a brand.

“If we build the brand to the extent that people have loyalty to that brand and realise that by associating with that brand, they are going to get bang for the buck, then the revenue base is going to increase and that is exactly what we are doing and we are not only looking into Jamaica, we are looking outside of Jamaica as well and to do that successfully, we have to build a brand which is global and that is what we are doing at the JOA, “ Samuda stated.

Meanwhile, according to Samuda, a long-term goal of his JOA administration is to departmentalise the entity to deal with the issues facing the various sporting disciplines. This, he believes will better enable the JOA to assist these sports.

“I would really love to see the apex body, not as a monolithic institution, but where we have a department well established so that members can come in, we can sit with them, we can grow with them more intimately in terms of the administration, in terms of their strategic objectives and so forth, but that will come with time. We are laying the foundation already,” Samuda asserted.