All aboard!: AAB president says it’s no one-woman show

She may be the head of the Athletics Association of Barbados (AAB), but Catherine Jordan is adamant that it will not be a one-woman show.
The first ever president of the rebranded AAB, the body which replaced the former Amateur Athletics Association (AAA), Jordan has insisted that it will take a total team effort for the newly formed association to be successful.
Speaking to the media recently, the principal of St George Secondary revealed that she intended to work closely with the other members in an effort to chart a path forward.
“I do not manage by myself. So although I know what my plans are as an individual, my plans must line up with the plans of the council and obviously with all of the other stakeholders,” she said.
“So I will sit down with them sometime next week and we will go through what I consider to be a strategic plan.
“Even if not a formal strategic plan, some kind of plan that says what our strategic direction will be and whether it will remain the same or whether it needs to be changed.”
Jordan, who served as secretary of the AAA over the past eight years, said she was proud of the work the association did during that period.
“I’m pleased that in our eight years we have never left an athlete who has qualified [under the AAA rules] for an event at home.
“I am pleased that we made an attempt and were reasonably successful in getting coaches to come to the island, because we now have a coaching panel.
“And I am pleased that our base is wide, although it could be wider, so we have to do some more nurturing of the junior athletes to ensure that we have a base that is wide enough for them to grow.”
She highlighted the fact that for the past eight years the AAA had been debt-free and said this spoke volumes of the work that had been undertaken.
She said that one of the major issues the AAB would be looking to address would be sponsorship.
Citing the need for greater support from the public sector, Jordan suggested the association would be taking steps to promote the image of the sport.
“We have to look at our product to see how we can enhance it to ensure that the product is good enough that the public will want it.
“We have to look at our own advertising and our own PR product.
“That is what we will sit and do and hopefully come back and share with [Barbadians] the strategic direction we will take,” Jordan assured.
She maintained that with the Olympics scheduled for Brazil in 2016, the AAB would be working vigorously towards ensuring that athletes were fully prepared.