Inside Samoa’s sports body

After being awarded the right to host the 2015 Commonwealth Youth Games involving over 71 countries, the real work begins. The president of the Samoa Association of Sports and National Olympic Committee (S.A.S.N.O.C.), Fepulea’i Patrick Fepulea’i gives a glimpse into what is going on behind the scenes to ensure that the organization of this event goes smoothly in the sports operations preparation. He also gives an update on the country’s sports body.

COMMONWEALTH GAMES FEDERATION VISIT

Four weeks ago a couple of guys from the Commonwealth Games Federation visited to see how we were going forward with preparations for the 2015 Commonwealth Youth Games in September.
From the point of Sports Operations which I chair, there is still some work to be done. One of the requirements is for each of the nine sports to draw up a Sports Manual setting out how the Games will be delivered.
So we have now been set a timeline of what we need to do. All the nine sports have had to prepare their drafts and have them in today (Friday 31 October).
We have got people in the Commonwealth Youth Games office here like Moira, who is one of our sports advisers and will be helping us with the running of the Games, assisting with the drawing up of these manuals. So by mid November we have to submit all of these to the Commonwealth Federation for them to go through. After they have given their approval, the Manuals have to be sent off to the 71 Commonwealth countries.

Preparation of athletes

There were five of the nine sports at the meeting, four were unavailable to attend. It was to give everyone a hurry up. The other matter on the meeting’s agenda was looking at where they are in the preparation of athletes. Most of the sports have not finalised their teams yet and are still working on their development and preparing their juniors. While most of the participants will be locals, there will be some sports which will call several of our young athletes who are offshore. Swimming for instance are hoping to have gender balance with six of each.

Challenges
For some of our sports, they are on hold at present with the sports facilities closed down and unavailable in preparation for the Tuna Commission meeting in December, but after that, we will be back on track. In the meantime sports associations are having to be resourceful and look around to get the use of other gymnasiums and training facilities. The boxers also have no ring at present, the existing ones have been taken over by the professionals.
We do rely on the presidents and office bearers of the sports associations and federations to follow their constitutions and our rules of selection. It was disappointing to return from the Glasgow Games and to field phone calls from members of Lawn Bowls complaining there had been no trials for the selection of the team. Then the members were told that the team had been picked by us, S.A.S.N.O.C.
We endorse the teams to go, when they say “This is the team”. We rely on the sports doing the right thing and holding proper trials before they come to us. I mean it’s sad and I have told the members who complained, what are you doing about it? Get rid of those administrators.

Positive Olympic
Solidarity Audit
In the past weeks, we had Dennis Miller from Fiji and Nicole, the lady from Lausanne who is in charge of Olympic Solidarity Funding. They were actually quite pleased with what we have done.
I’m going next week to Thailand for a meeting of the Association of National Olympic Committees (ANOC). I think the more important meeting as far as I’m concerned is the regional Oceania National Olympic Committees (O.N.O.C.) meeting which will be held there at the same time. One of the things I’m looking forward to is that since they have just done our audit they will be giving me a report which we’ll discuss with these people in Thailand. The feedback that we had was very, very positive. They have been surprised with the work we have done in such a short time. Our C.E.O. Taiva has been one of the biggest pluses. They asked questions about all different areas like H.R., Job Descriptions, Organisation Charts, Training, Capacity Building and we had everything in place. Before they left they sent an email to the Secretary General of O.N.O.C. saying they were happy with what they have seen so could they please release some of the money for us. That’s a big sign of confidence in what we are doing. Taiva’s been working very hard with the staff and even when he was away for a meeting, there have been no issues while Agalelai and Phoebe have looked after things.
I’m very happy now that the S.A.S.N.O.C. staff with the training they have had, are managing the projects. We are giving them more responsibility now we have to start looking for funding and helping our sports.

Financial policy changes

We are now creating policies in areas where we haven’t had them before and we are nearly finished our financial protocols – how money is to be handled. Part of the problem was that our administration grants don’t really cover the salaries of the staff and all the grant money was also paid into the same account. Now we have set up a second account where grants and stuff are deposited so they can be easily accounted for and administration grants go into our operating account. Simple things like that the financial protocols our treasurer Talalelei is working on and I think that went down well with the people who came into do our audit.

Experienced Chef de Mission

The shortfall of changing the Chef de Mission for each event really showed up during the Nanjing Youth Games. We inherited a mess. We missed out on Youth Ambassadors, we missed out on entries in some of the sports like rugby 7’s for example. We just had two athletes for that. This was because of a lack of information.
So I decided it was not going to happen that way.
When there were the Mini Games, nobody would put their hand up but it was different when it came to the Commonwealth and Olympics.
This is why we now have a Chef de Mission for a four year period. We won’t be making the same mistakes again. He will continue on for the rest of the time that I am president. All that institutional knowledge that he gets is useful. You start with the Mini Games and then the next one gets bigger – the Pacific Games etc.
Prioritising funding
This is where I need to talk to government. If I had to pick the three sports that are likely to get medals at Olympic level they would be the rugby 7’s, weightlifting and boxing. They are our tier one sports and then there are tier two sports. Other sports may move up under that tier. However I think the bulk of our resources should be placed with tier one.

The way to the top

I mean our people and our government demand a lot in terms of getting those gold medals and it’s not an easy thing. I think we’ve all got to do our part to ensure that we give all the support and as much funding as we can.
We want these people to be training full time but we also know they have families and kids and so we need to start thinking outside the box to give them support. What can we do as a sports association to alleviate that? Very few have got scholarships, I.O.C. scholarships. But what else can we all do? At Glasgow I was looking at what we need to do to take the next step up? Perhaps having a proper dietician? Maybe getting a business to sponsor an athlete to train full time but having the use of him for their promotional or marketing work. These are some of the ideas we are looking at.