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ISSUE 1/MAY 2014
UTT SPORTS DAY - WHERE IS APA?
BY ZARIYA PEGUS
If you were on campus this semester(UTT Campus @ NAPA) and experienced the abject lack of enthusiasm surrounding sports day you may not believe me, but I have news about UTT’s SPORTS DAY 2014: Good news, and bad news. Typically my main focus at this event for obvious reasons is The APA (The Academy for the Performing Arts) campus. Why? Well, simply put I am a student at APA and so my perspective is naturally skewed.
This year our campus was not fully a part of sports day mainly because of the lack of student support and participation. So much so, that we did not even have a group of students to represent the campus in the march-past competition. “Sucks right?” March-past for me is the biggest part of any sports day, so knowing that we were not in it was a huge disappointment. I conducted a mini survey on campus before sports day trying to get answers to some questions that lingered in my mind about students’ lack of involvement. Eight out of ten students said that “lack of time” was the reason why they could not part take in the sports rather than just blatantly not wanting to be a part of it.
A common reason, TIME!!! Students at APA never have time to do any extra-curricular activities considering that they are always in some engagement be it dance shows, theatrical performances or music gigs. Not to mention that this year, sports day was tremendously close to the world’s greatest festival “CARNIVAL”, need I say more? Well just to clear the air, many of our dance students and musicians perform at the various Carnival related shows with rehearsals for months before the actual shows in some cases. Also there are gigs in between where artists make guest appearances and most times need their dancers and musicians so that is another week of no sleep for my fellow classmates. Anyone who knows about Carnival knows that there are a mirage parties, all inclusive fetes and band launches that take place. TIME, at this time of the year us performers know for a fact that time merely exists to facilitate rehearsals and performances.
Our dear pan players are pre occupied with panorama competitions, single, small, medium and large band categories. Most of them play for at least two bands and rehearsals for pan are strenuous with extremely long hours. Sometimes they are so tired that they even miss school in an attempt to catch up on sleep. Last but definitely not least, our actors. I myself being in the acting discipline know exactly what it is like around carnival season. I can speak for myself and say that I have been involved in many shows, “Circus Circus” with Carvalho Productions being the biggest and longest running performance I had all year. Not to mention mini gigs in Woodford Square and schools and so on.
Bottom line is that it was almost impossible for our students to be fully committed to sports day especially this year and as the above proves, not by choice. I made it my duty however to be present on the day itself, some support is better than no support - right?
As the popular saying goes “better late than never” so following a rehearsal I had in Port of Spain the morning of Sports Day, I headed to the venue in Arima for what I hoped would be an afternoon for fun. As expected, there were no more than sixty supporters from my campus if so much, because at times it felt like twenty persons were there. I was very disappointed at the turn out but understanding at the same time. Compared to last year’s attendance, this was a total down fall.
Our very famous rhythm section was not present due to the percussionists’ absence. We barely participated in the events themselves. However on a positive note, we became supporters of the other campuses and routing for who we predicted would win the overall day. At an interval where I wasn’t all caught up in the atmosphere, I asked a few questions to a fellow APA supporter Lesedi Felix and this is what he said:
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