By BRENT STUBBS

Senior Sports Reporter

bstubbs@tribunemedia.net

If legal proceedings in the United States don’t allow quartermiler Stephen ‘Dirty’ Newbold to return home to compete in the BTC Carifta Games, it will be a big loss for Team Bahamas and he will definitely be missed, said head coach Greg Cash.

Newbold, who was named to the Bahamas’ 70-member team expected to compete against 25 other countries at the new Thomas A Robinson Track and Field Stadium starting next Saturday, was arrested for discharging a firearm in public and resisting without violence.

Reports from Tallahassee, Florida, indicate that Newbold and fellow Florida State University sprinter Ronell Mance, were arrested shortly before 4am Thursday near a student apartment complex.

Nobody was injured.

Mance, who celebrated his 21st birthday on Thursday, won a silver medal in the 2012 Olympic Games in London, England, while 18-year-old Newbold was the MVP at the recent Atlantic Coast Conference indoor track and field championships.

Both were immediately suspended from Florida State and their future as student-athletes will be determined by the university’s disciplinary policy and legal proceedings.

Bahamas Association of Athletic Associations’ president Mike Sands was not available for comments up to press time last night.

But, when contacted, Cash said they will definitely miss Newbold’s services for the games. “We are still not clear on what is happening,” Cash said.

“My prayer now is that it isn’t what it is because you always want to know that the door that has been opened up to Bahamians will continue to be opened up to Bahamians. But when things like this happen, if it is true, then the question mark is not just what about his future, but the future of all other Bahamian athletes who might have intentions of going to the institution that he was a part of.”

As for the Carifta Games, Cash said they got some instructions from Newbold’s coach at FSU that they had intended to follow, if he had been released to compete on the team.

“In the event that he would have been competing, we are in a position to bump up athletes who are on the team to compete,” Cash said. “They would have lost out to him because of the times that he would have competed. So we are looking at who we can use to replace him if it comes down to it.”

Cash, however, said he was not at liberty to say which events Newbold was scheduled to compete in and which athlete would end up replacing him.

He said they are still weighing out the entire scenario and will have a meeting today to make their determination. “It’s my prayers that his parents will also be encouraged because we know that things could go wrong,” Cash said. “Maybe, it’s just allegations, so we will have to wait and see exactly what happens first.”

Newbold, who also runs the 400 metre hurdles, was a member of the under-20 boys 4 x 400 relay team that won the gold at last year’s Carifta Games in Hamilton, Bermuda.

In Montego Bay, Jamaica, in 2011, Newbold won the bronze in the 400 and was on the 4 x 4 bronze medal team. Also in 2011, he won the gold medal in the 200 at the IAAF World Youth Championships in Lille, France.

And in 2010 in Georgetown, Grenada, he was a gold medallist in the 400 hurdles and ran on the silver medal 4 x 4 relay team. That year at the CAC Junior Championships in Santo Domingo, Newbold captured the gold in the 400 hurdles and as a member of the 4 x 4 relay team.