BASSETERRE, St. Kitts, May 28.2018 – THE Nevis Athletics Stadium (Mondo Track) held its first major track and field meet on Sunday (May 28), when it played host to the St. Kitts-Nevis Amateur Athletics Association (SKNAAA) 2018 National Interclub Championships.
The event saw a total of nine clubs participating; and Minister of Sport in the Nevis Island Administration, Eric Evelyn believes that it signals bigger and better things to come for the facility.
With the track hosting the 2018 Inter-Primary School event, the Club Championships was the most high profile meet of its kind at the facility, as the entities partner to have it on Nevis.
Evelyn told SKNVibes Sports on the sidelines of the event that members of the executives approach him within his capacity as the Sport Minister and pushed to have it on Nevis.
“I immediately said yes! We have spent a lot of money here, we have made the investment to have infrastructure and we must have the facility being used. The more use we have of the facility; the better we believe the talent will be.”
The minister was adamant that the hosting of the meet will be the springboard for more meets in 2018 and beyond.
President of the (SKNAAA) Val Henry disclosed that his organization has a mandate to develop the sport on both islands, and it is against that backdrop that they determined the need to host the meet at Long Point.
According to Henry, the track public in Nevis has been starved of top quality athletics on the sister island.
“The hosting of the SKNAAA Club Championships at the Nevis Athletics Stadium was deliberate as part of our initiative to develop the sport here. Track and field in St. Kitts and Nevis has come a long way, but we recognized that we also have a duty to ensure that we have important as the National Championships on Nevis.”
This is the first time in nearly 40 years, Henry said, that the event is being held on the sister island. Against that backdrop, he revealed that with the new internationally recognized facility, the first thing they had to undertake was to support infrastructure facility on Nevis.
The president told SKNVibes Sport that their plans going forward will be to host one national meet at the facility annually on a rotational basis, that is, either the interclub event or nationals.
In expressing pleasure with having the event on the island, Minister Evelyn said “ we are happy there is now a sharing of these meets”.
Currently, the government is expected to soon commence the second phase of a two-phase project to construct the mega facility on the island.
