By Neto Baptiste
One member of the Concerned Parents Sports Association (CPTSA) Wings Sports Club and head of the body’s track and field arm, Randy Allen, believes the organisation’s decision to forgo annual elections over the past five years is an internal issue and should not be used to vilify one of its members and potential football association presidential candidate, Barbara Coates.
Allen, a former sprinter, called into the Good Morning Jojo Sports Show on Wednesday as he sought to defend Coates after questions were raised about the club’s affairs on the show just days earlier.
“The club is divided into the different sections with the different sports, and each individual runs the different sectors. Presently, I am the one running the track and field aspect of it, Mrs. Coates is running the football, Ms. [Dennika] Bascum is doing basketball and Ms. Farida Carr, and we came together as the head of the sectors and said that look, the president has been doing a decent job as the parent body and we have decided that we are comfortable running our sectors, but the president has been doing a good job for the longest while. If it is not broken we are not going to try to fix it, so he [Brumant] will go out and seek sponsorship for the parent body so that the other sectors can do what they need to do. The constitution states that we should have an election once the members are in an agreement with having an election,” he said.
Long-standing president of the Wings Sports Club, Lucaso Brumant, has been at the helm since its inception in 1989 while Coates is responsible for the body’s football programme. However, with the ABFA elections now set for 25 April, the potential candidate has come under fire.
Allen said Coates has played a pivotal role in the organisation’s growth as it continues to promote the development of women in sports.
“The Wings Sports Club is the only club in Antigua that has contributed to female sports in Antigua and Barbuda on a local, regional and international level from basketball, football and track and field. There was the Gillian Brazier Basketball Tournament, the Lowell Jarvis Female Football Tournament, and with football, we are the only club that has been able to bring a professional female club from Jamaica to come and participate in our female tournament,” he said.
Coates, in a recent interview, reminded that she is not the president of Wings, adding that she has been given a task to run the football arm of the organisation which she has successfully done for many years.