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| Minister of Youth and Sports in Nevis Hon Laughton Brandy |
CHARLESTOWN NEVIS (OCTOBER 18, 2005) -- Minister of Youth and Sports in the Nevis Island Administration (NIA) Hon Laughton Brandy, has attributed Nevis success in sports overseas to the abundance of the island's raw talent. He said his ministry's vision is to have Nevis name become synonymous with sports in the international arena.
Minister Brandy made the comment recently during a presentation at the first in a series of islandwide town hall meetings which was held at the Alberta Payne Community Centre in Bath Village.
We want people out there, internationally, to have a perception of Nevis through sports. We want them to have that window that they could see Nevis as part of the international environment through its sports. I think we have done it in sports, we have done it in cricket and we have done it in netball.
Sometimes people forget that Nevis is the first island in the Leeward Islands that has had a captain of the West Indies Netball team, just as it was a Nevisian who was the first to make entry into the West Indies Cricket Team from the Leeward Islands.
So whoever came after the great names you hear would have come because we (Nevis) paved the street for them to walk in, we broke down the barriers, the discrimination, the bias. We broke it all down and we broke it all down through share talent, he said.
According to Mr. Brandy, his ministry had seen successes in a number of their sports programmes and others they have supported. Their latest initiative involved exposing the islands youths to the game of golf. The programme has given the youths the opportunity to develop skills on facilities which exist on the island. He also said the game of golf had stimulated the participant's interests and some have given up watching cartoons on television in exchange for golf.
Tennis is another sport in which the Ministry affords the youth the opportunity to develop skills in the sport, a sport which he contends is now established as an alternative sport in Nevis. Mr. Brandy noted that the construction of a number of public tennis courts has attracted many young people into the game and a vibrant association made up of volunteers has taken over training.
In other words the Ministry of Youth and Sports no longer has to go in there and organise programmes, we just lend support to an existing institution in the Nevis Tennis Association and they have done an excellent job, adding that Anthony Sugar Cake Webbe and Stephen Webbe have taken on the mantle of voluntarily training Nevisian youths. If you have to look at volunteerism you have to look at these two gentlemen, they are always there almost every afternoon and they refuse no one.
Mr Brandy said that is was the intension of the Ministry to take the game of tennis beyond Nevis and also to use it to market the island.
The Minister also spoke of a volleyball training camp that was organised by the International Volleyball Association (IVA). The camp was successfully negotiated with the assistance of the president of the St. Kitts and Nevis Volleyball Association Mr Glen Queenland. The camp had been held in St. Kitts annually for the past five years.
The training was conducted by the IVAs Technical Director Dr Paul Brasson who Mr Brandy said left the participants with a high sense of motivation and high self confidence to spur them to train the island's youth. He said his Ministry has already committed its support and to providing the necessary equipment to band the participants together to form an association in an effort to raise the level of volleyball on Nevis.
He said the Technical Director was so impressed with one of the participants at the training camp that gave a commitment to sending a team of junior volleyballers from Barbados to Nevis to hold exhibition matches to continue to motivate Nevisians. Mr. Brandy said Dr Brasson also recommended Nathalie Nisbett be drafted into the National Volleyball Team. I am talking just out of a training camp and she was able to forge her way into the national team. Natural talent and our boys in crocket have exhibited that same level of talent he said.
The Minister also spoke on another new sports initiative, the Nevis 10K run, which his Ministry was seeking to gain international attention for. This event is something which is attracting persons from outside Nevis and it is going to be a sports tourism experience, he said. A team from the Ministry of Youth and Sports and the Nevis Athletic Association plan to visit Puerto Rico to the World's Best 10K which attracts in excess of 1000 participants. While there Mr. Brandy said the team would use the opportunity to promote Nevis 10K with the hope of expanding the event here.
Mr. Brandy also commended the efforts of young Nevisian cricketers who have been enjoying successes in the Caribbean I see a bright future, he said adding, I see the captain of the West Indies team here in Nevis and he is taking at least four boys with him on that same team. We just need to give our young people a chance and the support they need, he said.
