The Sports Com­pa­ny of T&T (SporTT) has ex­tend­ed the open­ing and clos­ing hours to the clubs and ath­letes at the Na­tion­al Aquat­ic Cen­tre (NAC) in Bal­main, Cou­va to bet­ter serve the lo­cal aquat­ic sports com­mu­ni­ty.

Ef­fec­tive yes­ter­day, the fa­cil­i­ty will op­er­ate from 4 am to 8 pm dai­ly, pro­vid­ing greater flex­i­bil­i­ty for ath­letes and teams. Up un­til Tues­day, the fa­cil­i­ty was open from 6 am to 6 pm.

The NAC will be ful­ly manned by life­guards from 4 am to 8 pm. This en­sures a safe en­vi­ron­ment for all users dur­ing train­ing ses­sions.

SporTT CEO Ja­son Williams said the ex­tend­ed pool hours will pro­vide more op­por­tu­ni­ties for aquat­ic sports ath­letes.

“This ad­just­ment is a di­rect re­sponse to the needs of our lo­cal aquat­ic sports com­mu­ni­ty, al­low­ing them more op­por­tu­ni­ties to train and pre­pare for na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion,” Mr. Williams said.

The com­pe­ti­tion and warm-up pools will re­main ex­clu­sive to elite, na­tion­al, and club ath­letes for train­ing and com­pe­ti­tion. SporTT Chair­man, Michael L. Ro­many, is en­thu­si­as­tic about the up­dat­ed swim sched­ule.

Ro­many said, “The ex­tend­ed open­ing hours re­flect our com­mit­ment to sup­port­ing high-per­for­mance ath­letes and teams by en­sur­ing they have in­creased ac­cess to world-class fa­cil­i­ties.”

Reached for com­ment, Shawn Pouchet, Pres­i­dent of the Aquat­ic Sports As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (ASAT&T), said he and his as­so­ci­a­tion wel­comed the move.

“Our First Vice-Pres­i­dent, Paul Newal­lo, would have held dis­cus­sions with SporTT chair­man Lar­ry Ro­many about mak­ing the fa­cil­i­ty more ac­ces­si­ble to the lo­cal clubs, and dis­cus­sions would have al­so tak­en place with the head of the life­guards as well.

“In the end, a pos­i­tive so­lu­tion ma­te­ri­alised where­by we now have the fa­cil­i­ty avail­able to swim­mers for a morn­ing ses­sion be­tween 4 am and 7 am, where they can then head off to school or work, and then in the af­ter­noon ses­sion, the swim­mers or clubs can have two ses­sions avail­able to them, 4 pm to 6 pm and an­oth­er from 6 pm to 8 pm.”

“So while the Carif­ta Games is com­ing up in April and it will al­so al­low for the swim­mers to have more train­ing time, this de­ci­sion was more to­wards look­ing at a long-term so­lu­tion for our ath­letes and clubs in gen­er­al,” stat­ed Pouchet.

Ac­cord­ing to SporTT, book­ings for the use of the NAC must be made through the ASATT (Aquat­ic Sports As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T) or di­rect­ly via the SporTT web­site, http://www.sportt-tt.com. For fur­ther de­tails on book­ings and fa­cil­i­ty ac­cess, email book­ings@sportt-tt.com.