The CAC Games are over but how do you feel sporting people?

In 2018, the Trinidad and Tobago contingent left Baranquilla, Colombia with bags of medals – 30 in all.

The bag wasn’t so full this time when Team TTO left San Salvador, El Salvador and Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic where the Games were held this year.

Nineteen medals seem a big climbdown from 30; a regression.

The eight golds won in swimming, athletics and cycling – largely through the higher quality of Dylan Carter, Jereem Richards and Nicholas Paul – more or less matched the nine won in 2018.

The big drop-ff came in the bronze medals, where T&T earned nine less than in 2019. That fact by itself does not mean much.

Of more concern to the various national sporting bodies should be the disciplines and the individuals who did not manage to step on the podium.

Team TTO only got three medals from females out of their 19. That must be a concern. In track and field only one precious metal – a silver in the 4×100 metres relay – was contributed by women.

That fact is not so much a surprise. The local contingent that went to El Salvador was overwhelmingly male. For instance, Cherelle Thompson, 31, was the lone female swimmer, an occurrence that has become a trend in that sport since the Covid-19 pandemic struck.

This enemy may be invisible and on the wane, but Covid is like the proverbial elephant in the room, and its impact on local sport is still being felt.

“We have to remember very vividly that Covid came in between there and there was an impact. That is the reality,” notes Trinidad and Tobago Olympic Committee president Diane Henderson.

She makes the point that, “we have to be quite cognisant that…teams have not had the competition that they need to be always sharp…We are very pleased under the circumstances. CAC is the only regional competition that we can go to of this magnitude.”

I’m wary when the Covid wand is waved as an explanation for performances. It was a pandemic after all, one that affected all the countries against whom athletes from this country compete.

But it is also a reality that the pandemic has had a negative impact on participation in many sports, especially by girls. In gymnastics, some clubs virtually had to start over when they got to return to play.

Referring to the TTOC’s series of conferences focussed on women in sport, Henderson recalls that, “we have had three or more testimonies of how they (women) had to adjust lifestyles to cater for the impact of Covid. A lot of mental help support is necessary for both men and women.”

The past year-and-a-half has made it clear that outside of the physical devastation it caused, the pandemic also had a negative impact on many people’s mental well-being. The isolation that Covid caused has led several budding athletes away from the path they were on.

These are truly challenging times for youngsters, so those who have accepted the responsibility to oversee them in the different disciplines have to step up their own games.

Pleasing as the work of Carter, Paul and “Jereem the Dream” has been the last 18 months; encouraging as Nikoli Blackman’s silver medal in swimming and Joshua Johnson’s silver in chess has been at the CAC Games, there are too many others who are being held back and let down by the lack of vision and initiative of those in charge of them.

The youths who got to stretch their legs at the Junior Track and Field Championships on the weekend must have been happy just to be able to bounce around on the track at the spruced-up Hasely Crawford Stadium, so restricted have been their opportunities to practise their sport because of unavailable venues.

Just why that is the case in two islands with so many facilities is a scandal. But that’s for another time.

Today, think with admiration about those who made it to CAC and got medals, some of them against the odds. But spare a thought too for the missing ones.