By Neto Baptiste
The National Sport Awards honouring athletes and administrators for their outstanding performances in 2023 will be held on March 2, 2024 as organisers seek to move the ceremony back to its original date.
This is according to chair of the organising committee, Cleofoster Harris, who said the body is also seeking to give associations adequate notice ahead of the distribution of nomination forms.
“This awards ceremony will be done on the first weekend of March, which would be the weekend prior to Inter-Schools Championships, and the awards will retain its same set-up in terms of how we did it in 2023 honoring those for 2020 and 2021 [and 2022]. What we are doing at the moment is giving the associations advance heads-ups so we are starting our rollout with the marketing so that at least when the forms are sent out in mid-September to each association, giving them a deadline date of November 30, nobody will be caught off-guard and saying they didn’t see the forms,” he said.
Harris added that the committee will be distributing nomination forms in short order while expressing gratitude to those who supported the initiating in June, and have pledged to do so going forward.
“The sports awards committee will be sending out, in short order, in the same period we will be sending out the application [nomination] forms, our sponsorship letters to bring on more sponsors to the awards this year to help us offset some of the expenses we incur. Let me say thank you to those who came on this year in Cool & Smooth, Caribbean Alliance Insurance, and also we want to say thank you to ABS Television and the Antigua and Barbuda Olympic and Commonwealth Games Committee who have so far consented to be back on board,” the chairman said.
West Indies fast bowler, Alzarri Joseph and IFBB Elite Pro Bikini Fitness bodybuilder, Ambassador Kimberly Percival, were named Sportsman and Sportswoman of the Year for 2022, while the June awards, the first since the Covid-19 virus reached the shores of Antigua and Barbuda in 2020, also saw the crowning of swimmers Ethan Stubbs-Green and Ellie Shaw as the Junior Sportsman and Sportswoman of the Year.