Report of 45th annual Carifta 2016

The St. Maarten Amateur Athletic Association has again received the opportunity to compete at the 2016 Carifta Games. Last year, Shakeba Pink accomplished a great performance for St. Maarten by receiving a Silver Medal, on the 3000 Meters Race. This year, St. Maarten set out to accomplish equal or greater results this year.

St. Maarten Amateur Athletic Association had held 3 qualifying competitions, giving the athletes the opportunity to qualify for the 2016 Carifta Games. This event was hosted in Grenada, from the 24^th – 28^th of March, 2016.

The following athletes whom qualified for to partake in the 45^th Annual Carifta Games, were as follows:

• Shakeba Pink- 1500 Meters, 3000 Meters; Shakeba successfully brought home the bronze medal in 1500 Meters, and a 4^th place finish in the 3000 Meters.
• Jeremy Drijvers – 100 Meters, 200 Meters; Jeremy qualified by running 11,04 Seconds at the trials. Coming out of the sport of Soccer, he did not qualify through the first round at the Carifta Games, but again ran a personal best of 11,03 Seconds
• Leshawn Brown – Octathlon; The Octathlon consisted of 8 different disciplines, for each performance, the athletes receives a certain amount of points, and the best 3 athlete with the most points wins a Gold, Silver or Bronze medal. The scores of Leshawn Brown for the different disciplines are as follows:

Day 1: 100m-12.04 sec, 400m- 53 sec, Long jump- 5,60m, Shot put- 11,33m

Day 2: 110m Hurdles- 14 sec, High jump – 1,63m, Javelin- 57m, 1500m- 5 min

Overall performance of the athletes was satisfactory, and they will be looking forward to take part in the next Carifta Games 2017, in Curacao. St. Maarten will be looking forward to participating with a much larger contingency.

In addition to this event, the overall trip to Grenada was very strenuous, we had many obstacles in getting to Grenada and returning to St. Maarten. Due to a very packed Easter Weekend, space was very limited, and had many difficulties obtaining a stand-by seating in and out of Grenada. This resulted in the Athletes missing a few days from school. All in all, it was a very successful outing, and we have learned from our mistakes and are looking forward to better our preparations leading up to such events. A big thank you goes out to all the sponsors and well-wishers for their support, and looking forward to their continued support.