Belize Athletic Association Needs More Support

In Early April, the Belize Athletic Association held its elections, where Cojac Smith was elected as the president with a vote of thirty-five to thirty-four over Jaheed Smith. With a newly elected council, the association hopes to open a new chapter of better accountability and support for athletes. President of the association, Cojac Smith spoke with us about the goal to secure more sponsorships and raise public awareness for sporting events.

 

Cojac Smith, President, Belize Athletic Association

“We recently had an election that concluded, the current vice president, mister Jaheed Smith against myself, a member of the association, and we were vying for the vacant position from mister Deon Sullivan, who had resigned about a year ago. So the conclusion, it was a close race and I ended up winning and winning by a small margin at one vote. So we have a new executive. Now we have some new members, new executive members, as well as some incumbents from the previous executive and we’re trying to move athletics as far Athletics as best as we can in a more Constructive way and being more just be more accountable producing a better product for Belize so that we can vie for more sponsorships and donors and stuff like that. So that’s the direction we’re trying to put it and just move athletics further developing the country developing sports Developing the athletes and the coaching’s as well. So that’s what we’re looking for. Nothing comes without money.”

 

Reporter

“So my next question is, how do you propose to bring in all those needed funds that will be needed to do all of these things?

 

Cojac Smith

“We’re looking at partnerships with different businesses, any businesses that are willing to partner with the association. We’re looking into collaboration. So, if anyone that’s listening to this newscast that wants to collaborate with the Belize Athletic Association and partner with us, to see how best it could be beneficial to both parties. We’re open to that. They could reach us at the Belize Athletic Association page on Facebook, or they could reach me at 632-2622, or they could always just contact me then, and I could have them talk to the General Secretary to work that out. But we’re just trying to be as collaborative as possible, and one of the things that Track and Field has not been doing It’s visibility. We’ve not been visible. So that’s probably one of the reasons we’ve had, have the support from the business community as much as we would want to. So it’s just to getting that started and also to push a better product that we’re producing as an executive. Just being more accountable could producing our financials and stuff like that, whereby we could vie for different sponsorship internationally and locally.”