By Juanita Hooper
AAG president Aubrey Hutson says changes to the programme under his tenure will depend upon recommendations and requests by coaches about what is needed to develop well-rounded athletes.
Hutson said he believes strongly that athletes are not products created by themselves but honed within a well-structured system within an association.
“An athlete does not produce himself but he is a product of a system and the degree of success he achieves is directly proportionate to the effectiveness of that system,” he said.
Hutson added that he hoped that coaches would take this responsibility seriously and report to the AAG about what is needed to boost athletes’ performances.
The AAG head said the first change he made after election was to configure the coaches’ structure.
The onus is now on the coaches to report to the AAG their findings after attending regular meetings.
“We are putting the coaches to work in respective areas for the development of athletics,” he said.
Hutson’s aim is to put Guyana back on the international scene. As such the AAG, he said, will engage the Ministry of Education and the Guyana Teachers Union for permission to start one of its programmes for schools. He hopes to see programmes from which athletes such as Alita Moore, Cassie George and Jason Yaw, the 2013 local CARIFTA qualifiers can benefit.
Hutson also said that he would like to have a system in place similar to the one in Jamaica and the Brazil football system that will have goal requirements for each athlete in the lead up to the 2016 Olympics in Brazil.
“Jamaica will always produce good sprinters because they have a good system of producing good sprinters. Brazil will produce good footballers because they have a good system of producing good footballers. It has nothing to do with money and has nothing to do with the amount of people in the population. It just has to do with a great system,” he said.
