Hay­den Mitchell and his team earned a fourth term in charge of man­ag­ing the af­fairs of ten­nis in T&T fol­low­ing the Ten­nis As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T’s (TATT) an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing (AGM) and elec­tion of of­fi­cers at the Na­tion­al Rac­quet Cen­tre in Tacarigua, yes­ter­day.

De­spite ac­cu­sa­tions that Mitchell and his ex­ec­u­tive vi­o­lat­ed the con­sti­tu­tion of the sport by the non-sub­mis­sion of au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments and their re­fusal to is­sue in­for­ma­tion on the elec­tion process, to ac­tions that ham­pered the de­vel­op­ment of the sport, the mem­ber­ship still vot­ed in their favour.

In­cum­bent pres­i­dent Mitchell led the way with 24 votes to 16 over his op­po­nent Louis Vil­lar­roel for the pres­i­den­cy.

Vil­lar­roel, a for­mer ten­nis play­er who rose suc­cess­ful­ly through the ranks by rep­re­sent­ing the coun­try at all the youth lev­els, led a rant that ac­cused Mitchell of con­sti­tu­tion­al breach­es that in­clud­ed al­low­ing play­ers se­lect­ed for na­tion­al tri­als to have to pay to train.

But it ap­peared to have fall­en on deaf ears as new pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer (PRO) on Mitchell’s slate An­to­nia Saul, in her maid­en com­ment to the na­tion­al pub­lic, hint­ed that the AGM that pre­ced­ed the elec­tions turned out to be a ses­sion of ‘teacher and stu­dents’.

Saul had ear­li­er de­feat­ed Sarah Sa­landy for the PRO post 32-8, while Mignon King was the on­ly los­er on the Mitchell slate on the day. She was de­feat­ed 21-19 for the po­si­tion of sec­re­tary.

Two oth­er con­firmed re­sults placed Dr Dwight An­gus ahead of Vil­lar­roel, who lat­er con­test­ed the post of as­sis­tant sec­re­tary fol­low­ing his loss in the pres­i­den­tial po­si­tion, while Dun­stan De­noon claimed the po­si­tion of trea­sur­er af­ter he de­feat­ed Ali­cia Pas­call by an un­con­firmed score.

Saul, the hold­er of a Mas­ter’s de­gree in Mar­ket­ing and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, told Guardian Me­dia Sports yes­ter­day that au­dit­ed the fi­nan­cial state­ments for 2020 to 2023 were ap­proved ex­cept for the year 2024.

Say­ing it was un­der­stood why 2024 was not ap­proved as that year had on­ly just end­ed, Saul said there was a gen­er­al ac­cep­tance af­ter the pres­i­den­tial re­port in which Mitchell gave com­pre­hen­sive ex­pla­na­tions of pro­ce­dures that were need­ed in man­ag­ing the af­fairs of the sport.

“The au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments for the years 2020-2023 were ap­proved by the mem­ber­ship. The on­ly one that was not ap­proved was 2024 and that’s be­cause the year just fin­ished, but all the oth­er years were ac­cept­ed by the gen­er­al body.

“The term is gen­er­al­ly a two-year term, but com­ing out of the pres­i­den­tial re­port which all vot­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions and clubs were able to re­ceive, ac­cept­ed it as it was, so the un­der­stand­ing that there are things that hap­pen in the back­ground that may pre­vent or are not nec­es­sar­i­ly the wis­est thing to have an elec­tion with­out your fi­nan­cial re­ports be­ing ready, and Mitchell was able to ex­plain how that process works and the ex­pla­na­tion was gen­er­al­ly ac­cept­ed by the body as okay,” Saul said yes­ter­day.

“So they have a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of how that process works, so all-in-all, the elec­tion process was a fair one. There were a lot of ques­tions asked and ex­pla­na­tions ren­dered. So for ex­am­ple, if there are peo­ple who didn’t un­der­stand from a fi­nan­cial per­spec­tive how funds come about to help sup­port an au­dit hap­pen­ing, all of those things were ex­plained to­day and I think the in­for­ma­tion was gen­uine­ly re­ceived, and the body is in a bet­ter po­si­tion to un­der­stand that process.”

The first as­sign­ment for the Mitchell-led as­so­ci­a­tion will be to work on com­mu­ni­ca­tion, which Saul said they have ac­cept­ed re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for.

“The body gen­er­al­ly ac­cepts that there is room for im­prove­ment. I don’t think that there is any mis­guid­ance in that way that the ad­min­is­tra­tion can’t do bet­ter. One of the key ar­eas that would be fo­cused on for sure would be that of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. I think whether it is this ad­min­is­tra­tion or an­oth­er ad­min­is­tra­tion, com­mu­ni­ca­tion was a key com­po­nent that need­ed to be worked on and we ac­cept re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for that. Out­side of that, there are some oth­er parts in terms of coach­ing de­vel­op­ment, team de­vel­op­ment and play­er de­vel­op­ment, and those are a part of things that are al­ready in the works,” Saul said.

“A lot was ex­plained to the gen­er­al mem­ber­ship to­day to en­sure that they un­der­stood that there are a lot of things that are be­ing worked on in the back­ground, but to come to a body and say this is go­ing to hap­pen by a par­tic­u­lar time is dif­fi­cult when some of your busi­ness part­ners in­clude gov­ern­ment en­ti­ties as well.”