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The Sportt Company of T&T played a major role in the successful staging of the Fifa Under-17 Women’s World Cup in T&T.

The event cost an estimated $25 million to upgrade all the facilities. In preparing T&T to host the tournament, Sportt which is a subsidiary of the Ministry of Sport, had to improve all the lighting systems at the five stadiums: Hasely Crawford Stadium, Mucurapo; Larry Gomes Stadium, Malabar; Ato Boldon Stadium, Couva; Mannie Ramjohn Stadium, Marabella and Dwight Yorke Stadium, Bacolet, Tobago.

Sportt also played an integral part in providing air conditioned dressing rooms at all five playing venues as well as improving on the plumbing, painting and general repairs.

She noted that all the generators at all five stadia were repaired and place in proper working condition, also the elevators at the stadia were repaired and are now functioning properly.

With the exception of the Hasely Crawford Stadium four new scoreboards were installed at all the venues that were used for matches.

Sportt also built camera ramps and towers as well as the construction of flag poles; and the laying of green outdoor carpets from the dressing rooms to the field to protect the mondo tracks.

Margaret Birch-Sampson, acting Chief Executive Officer at the Sportt said that her team at Sportt faced its biggest challenge at the 30-year-old Hasely Crawford Stadium and at Dwight Yorke Stadium where part of the roof had to be repaired after being blown off.

She said funds were also invested in upgrading the practise fields and dressing rooms at Queen’s Royal College, St Mary’s, Fatima and St Anthony’s where US GA Grade selica sand was brought in from Guyana.

All in all, she said the Ministry of Sport and Sportt met all requirements that were requested by Fifa and works were completed on time for kick-off.

Meanwhile, Fifa has given an A-grade to the media operations and services as well as the awareness created and provided through the various avenues during the recently concluded Fifa Under 17 Women’s World Cup.

Head of Fifa media for the tournament, Wolfgang Resch, who was among a Fifa team which inspected the five-stadia close to two years ago, said that overall Fifa was pleased with how the operations were carried out over the duration of the tournament.

“In general we can say that Fifa was very happy and impressed by the big coverage the tournament got in the local media. Reports were not only about T&T, but about all the teams were very satisfied. In newspapers as well as radio and TV, the tournament was present every day which helped a lot to make the competition more popular and drove a big attendance to the stadium,” Resch stated.

Fifa stated that this development was also encouraging ahead of the next Fifa Under 17 Women’s World Cup in Azerbaijan. LOC Deputy CEO Nataki Kerr, in her post-mortem meeting with the Fifa Organising Committee, said that Media also received a thumbs up.

“Generally they (Fifa) were satisfied with the media operations and coverage for the tournament. There were no major issues mentioned and that was most pleasing for us from the LOC standpoint.

We had Shaun Fuentes as head of media operations for the LOC working hand in hand with the Fifa media team to ensure that that aspect went as smoothly as possible,” Kerr said.

Fuentes was head of media operations for the LOC ably assisted by Dave Lamy and Hema Ramkissoon. Fuentes also oversaw a team of media volunteers, average 15 per venue along with selected venue media officers.

Some 134 countries broadcasted the matches live throughout the tournament, while there was day to day coverage in print media in several countries worldwide particularly the 15n visiting countries that participated.