Despite countless victories on local and regional circuits, Alika Morgan has still not been able to land either the Sportswoman-of-the-Year or the Junior Sportswoman-of-the-Year award of the National Sports Commission (NSC).
The NSC held its annual awards ceremony last Friday at the Cliff Anderson Sports Hall and despite having her best year, Morgan was the runner-up in both categories.
According to the results of the voting by the 12-member NSC panel, Morgan was beaten convincingly by Ashley Khalil for the Junior Sportswoman-of-the-Year award, while Alicia Fortune gained the edge in the Senior Sportswoman-of-the Year category.
The Morgan camp, however, is disappointed that Alika had been overlooked for the third straight year, considering the fact that she had turned in the best performances of her athletic career last year.
“This has been the third year that I have not been awarded the Junior Sportswoman-of-the-Year award and I am very disappointed because my coach and his wife tried their best to send me to competitions so that I could become a better athlete,” the 18-year-old Morgan told Stabroek Sport on Monday.
“This year I improved my timings a whole lot in every event that I did and I would like to thank my sponsors for their support. These sponsors can judge for themselves that I should have been the Junior Sportswoman-of-the-Year for the last three years,” she added.
“Systems should be put in place so that the panel is made up of persons who know more about sports and not just of dominating persons of the high society,” Morgan stated.
Morgan had expressed her anticipation of being awarded Junior Sportswoman of the Year to Stabroek Sport after she had returned from Run Barbados where she placed fourth in the 10 km and fourth in the half marathon among some of the world’s top female athletes.
After returning home from completing more than 19 miles in just over a 24-hour period Morgan, who was the first Caribbean woman and first under-nineteen female to cross the finish line, said:
“This year I trained hard because I really want to become the Junior Sportswoman-of-the-Year and I can see that training is helping me because I keep improving on my personal best and at the half marathon I finished strongly and I know this year I won’t have a problem winning.”
As she enters yet another season without the award that she and her coach consider rightfully theirs, they predict bigger and better heights regardless of their recent disappointment.
Morgan intends to capture gold medals in three events at the 2008 Carifta Games which is scheduled for March 22-24 in St. Kitts as well as medals in the Central American & Caribbean Junior Championships and the IAAF World Junior Championships in July to continue her quest to earn the respect of the governing sports body in Guyana.