By RENALDO DORSETT

Sports Reporter

rdorsett@tribunemedia.net

Keeping with the theme of guiding the Bahamas toward the “business of sports,” Minister of Youth, Sports and Culture Dr Daniel Johnson said the development of junior programmes across the country will be enhanced with the establishment of a National Sports Academy.

Dr Johnson said the recruitment process for these satellite programmes, expected to be established not only in the capital but also in the Family Islands, could begin as soon as January 2013.

“It is a recruitment programme where we will go out and select young student athletes with the highest potential to join. We have a team of five recruiters who will be made known be January. They will come to your school, they will come to your events, just like you see in the movies,” he said.

“It will be a scope that will encompass all sports and the elite level coaching will be the difference in what separates these centers from your run of the mill clubs. We will bring the best coaches in from the region and internationally to expose our athletes to the best training in the best facilities.”

Johnson indicated that coaches from as far away as Japan, Europe, Canada and the USA have already expressed interest in the programme.

“You will have full access to coaching from all around the world. The Sports Academy will be in the same mold as the Nick Bollettieri programme in South Florida or the John McIntosh gymnastics programme in Pompano Beach. There are examples all around the world but ours will be a multi-purpose one. It will also be tied in with the College of the Bahamas,” he said.

“We flirted with the idea of creating Centers of Excellence following the 1987 Carifta Games. The Bahamas performed so well, the powers that be felt as if we needed to capitalise on the opportunity and do a better job harnessing the talent throughout the country at an early level. Well that idea didn’t come to fruition at the time. Other countries in the region such as Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago went ahead with them and it has been a great benefit to their programmes.”

Following the “Golden Knights” triumph at the London 2012 Olympics in August, Prime Minister Perry Christie pledged his administration’s commitment to the development of Bahamian sports and, in particular, the Olympic movement by creating “Centers of Excellence” to seek and cultivate talent throughout all islands of the Bahamas.

“We are an island nation and there are those young men and young women with incredible talent out there who must be found. I am going to commit my government to working with the BOC and with the BAAAs to ensure that we give the best opportunity to those 14 and 15-year-olds who are out there with what we now know to be talent that can be produced for Brazil,” Mr Christie said.

“I want to be able to say to you today that the minister responsible for sports will dedicate his ministry with a level of co-operation with the athletic association and people of good will to be able to ensure that we create ‘Centers of Excellence’ that we promised in our own platform which will be calculated to develop the sporting talent of our youth in this country to the point where I am certain that we are able to have and produce in this period of four years, athletes that have the potential to make the Olympics that will represent us in Brazil. I have been incentivised by what you have done and how you did it,” he said.