By BRENT STUBBS

Senior Sports Reporter

bstubbs@tribunemedia.net

HAVING received the confidence of the delegates to serve for another term, Mike Sands said he’s more pleased with the progress his administration made during his first four-year term and he’s eager to proceed with his second term as president of the renamed North American, Central American and Caribbean Athletics (NACAC Athletics).

Re-elected during the under-18 and under-23 championships in Costa Rica in July, Sands said they also made the change in their name to NACAC Athletics to coincide with World Athletics and the European Athletics.

“That is the brand that we are promoting,” Sands said.

Hopefully with the name change, Sands said NACAC Athletics can improve on the banner year that they experienced in 2023 as they move forward to accomplishing another banner year in 2024.

“We hosted the CARIFTA Games here in the Bahamas (in April) that coincided with the Bahamas’ 50th Independence anniversary celebrations,” Sands said. “We held the under-18 and under-23 NACAC Championships in Costa Rica that had a record number of participants.

“We also had the under-13 and under-15 Championships in the Dominican Republic, which also had a record number of participants and we had the New Life Championships and we had our annual general elections.”

Sands said they made an amendment to their constitution, which was unanimously passed by the body at a special called meeting in March and, for the first time, NACAC achieved a first with three women being added to the five members sitting on World Athletics Council.

“For the first time ever, we have advanced the election process for the CARIFTA Games whereby Grenada will host this year’s games over the Easter holiday weekend and we have decided that next year it will be held in Trinidad & Tobago in 2025 and Barbados will be the host in 2026.

“They have offered themselves and I say offered because I don’t want anybody to think that the Bahamas didn’t have a chance. At the congress, we opened the floor and Trinidad and Barbados offered to host it in 2025 and 2026.”

The Bahamas Government, according to Sands, has offered to allow NACAC to establish a permanent head office at the Thomas A. Robinson National Stadium.

By virtue of serving as the president, Sands was able to move the office to the stadium, but he said the plans going forward is that the office will remain here whether he’s returned as the president or not in the next elections.

To cap off the year, Sands said American sprinter Noah Lyles was selected as World Athletics’ Male Track Athlete of the Year for 2023. “That is our year in a nutshell,” Sands said. “So we want to carry the successful year into the new year and build on that momentum and have an equally successful year.”

Already in their planning process, Sands said the council members are meeting to put together their strategic plans for the ensuing years.

“We’ve had some people who were elected by the members on their own agenda and they were elected based on what they want to see NACAC do,” Sands said. “But we are taking a different approach and what we will do, when we meet in about two weeks, is that we will bring all those ideas together and see how we can mesh them into a strategic plan so everyone can be inclusive.”

In the meantime, Sands said they have established a number of commissions, which will allow for more inclusions as the commissions will be allowed to advise the council on the way forward.

“One of our primary things is our gender leadership. We are very proud of that grouping and we want to continue to work alongside them,” he said. “They have their training workshop coming up in a few weeks as well.

“So, we have already hit the ground running, including our coaching education where we have had several clinics for our coaches and we hope to have several camps where we train the coaches so to speak and even our gender leadership.”

As for their competition, Sands said in addition to CARIFTA being staged in Grenada, NACAC will also host the NACAC Open Championships and the New Life Invitational. While the two events took place in Grand Bahama last year, Sands said they are still looking for a place to put them on this year.

“As in any federation, the biggest challenge is always funding,” he said. “One of the things we are progressively pursuing is a marketing strategy. We hope to secure the funding to do a number of things we want to do in our area, especially with the Olympic Games being held in July.

“With a number of events being closer at home, we hope it will serve the athletes well so that they don’t have to be all over the globe just before they head to Paris. They have expressed an appetite to compete closer to home and still earn a decent payday. So, we want to provide the prize money at our meets to be able to attract our athletes to compete in our region.”

One of the highlights of meets for the year will be the return of the World Relays to the Bahamas in May. Although it will be under the jurisdiction of the Bahamas Association of Athletic Associations (BAAA) with the supervision of World Athletics, Sands said it was agreed it will be mandatory for all countries to participate if they desire to have a relay team compete in Paris.

“What that means is that there are 16 available spots for the relays and 14 of them in each relay will qualify here in the Bahamas at the World Relays,” Sands revealed. “So, the return of the World Relays to the Bahamas will be bigger than many people anticipate.”

The sixth edition of the World Relays will run over the weekend of May 4-5 in the newly renovated Thomas A. Robinson National Stadium where the first three editions took place in 2014, 2015 and 2017.