Youth footballers could sit CSEC in US

It is one of sev­er­al con­sid­er­a­tions cur­rent­ly be­fore the board of the TTFA to deal with the clash in dates for the CSEC ex­ams and the CON­CA­CAF U-17 Men’s Cham­pi­onship, which is al­so be­ing used as a World Cup Qual­i­fi­er, from May 1 in Flori­da, Unit­ed States.

The board is set to meet for a sec­ond time this week on the mat­ter as the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion moves swift­ly to en­sure that the ed­u­ca­tion and life of no young play­ers are af­fect­ed by the tour­na­ment.

The of­fi­cial, who spoke un­der con­di­tions of anonymi­ty, said they have al­ready reached out to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to see what can be done.

"We are not the ones who set the dates for the tour­na­ment, but we are do­ing our re­search to de­ter­mine if the ex­am can be done out­side. We are not sure as yet, but it’s not the first time we have been faced with this sit­u­a­tion," the of­fi­cial said.

Yes­ter­day An­ton Corneal, tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor of lo­cal foot­ball, who has faced sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances in the past, said the so­lu­tion is to call the min­istry of ed­u­ca­tion and ask for their ad­vice on it. In the past, play­ers were asked to leave the tour­na­ment and re­turn af­ter they are fin­ished.

"An­oth­er op­tion is for the play­ers to take the ex­am af­ter the tour­na­ment if that can be al­lowed. What­ev­er’s the case, they must be guid­ed by the min­istry," Corneal said.

The ju­nior "War­riors" re­ceived au­to­mat­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tion in­to the Cham­pi­onship and will be­gin their cam­paign on May 1 at the IMG Acad­e­my in Braden­ton with ac­tion in Group E, fea­tur­ing de­fend­ing cham­pi­on Mex­i­co, Ja­maica, Bermu­da and T&T. This will co­in­cide with the stag­ing of groups F, G and H, as well as the knock­out stage.

The ju­nior War­riors will be­gin against Bermu­da on May 1, be­fore meet­ing Ja­maica and Mex­i­co in that or­der on May 3 and 5, re­spec­tive­ly.

The tour­na­ment ac­tu­al­ly gets go­ing March 16-24 for Groups A and C and con­tin­ues from April 1-9 with ac­tion in groups B and D.

CSEC ex­ams be­gin on May 3 with Phys­i­cal Ed­u­ca­tion and Sport; May 6- Vi­su­al Arts, Chem­istry, Mu­sic and Tex­tiles and Cloth­ing; May 7- Caribbean His­to­ry, In­dus­tri­al Tech­nol­o­gy, Me­chan­i­cal En­gi­neer­ing; May 8- Tech­ni­cal Draw­ing, Agri­cul­tur­al Sci­ence; May 9- So­cial Stud­ies (1&2); May 10- Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture (1&2); May 13- Prin­ci­ples of Ac­counts (1&2); May 14- Eng­lish Lan­guage (1&2); May 15- Math­e­mat­ics (1&2); and May 16- Ge­og­ra­phy, Agri­cul­tur­al Sci­ence, In­dus­tri­al Tech­nol­o­gy, Elec­tri­cal and Elec­tron­ics.

Ex­ams con­tin­ue on May 17 with Eng­lish Lan­guage 3/2 and Re­li­gious Ed­u­ca­tion, be­fore re­sum­ing on May 20.

New as­sis­tant coach Ken­wyne Jones said he is un­sure of how many play­ers are like­ly to be af­fect­ed by the clash in dates but his squad is set to be trimmed from 38 this week. The un­for­tu­nate clash in date will af­fect young stu­dent/play­ers through­out the Caribbean.

Mean­while, William Wal­lace, pres­i­dent of the Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League (SS­FL) said he is con­fused by the CON­CA­CAF’s sched­ul­ing of the tour­na­ment at the time when re­gion­al stu­dent/foot­ballers will be in­volved in ex­ams.

"They (CON­CA­CAF) are sup­posed to be aware of this," Wal­lace said.