Solutions to the problems faced by Team Ghana in London

The IAAF Championships ended on the 13th of August 2017, a championship deemed to celebrate Usain Bolt and Mohammed Farah.

Both paid their dues to their countries and have made strides in track sports. It was time for both of them to draw curtains to their illustrious careers.

Ghana was part of that party and that is all Team Ghana turned to be good for as no Ghanaian athlete made it past the first round.

Ghana Athletics indeed has a problem but it is high time the state, corporate Ghana and the general public look at how to solve the issue on our hands instead of the predominant blame game.

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Long term planning

There is the saying that “Rome was not built in a day.” In Ghana, sports administrators most at times attend to issues like they were filling a pothole on a road. They just try to solve the issue as it comes with a quick fix only for the problem replicate or emerge in another form. The main issue with athletics is that all actors involved from the state to the sporting federation and athletes themselves do not seem to have a synchronized plan.

If the state comes out to draw the road map for the future there is likely to even get revenue to fund trips instead of coughing up sums of monies from the state funds.

School athletics

If indeed there is some planning going into Ghana athletics, schools of all levels will definitely not be ignored. In USA, this acronym NCAA is a big deal. The National Collegiate Athletics Association deals organizes a wide range of sports competitions which are well packaged and marketed. This forms the bedrock of major sporting franchise in the United States like the NBA and NFL. Ghana should make it a point to look into that area and improve the franchise.  The state in conjunction with the Ghana Athletics Association should look to make it a bigger brand. The proceeds from these events should go into a fund that will seek to sponsor athletes on these trips

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Sponsorship Strategies

There has always been some clamoring and bickering over the lack of sponsors for Ghana Athletics. However, there should be a systematic approach the Ghana Athletics Association and the state could take in order to secure sponsors. The Ghana Football Association used to have that model where a sponsor takes over the flagship of the mini-tournament before taking over the league.

In 2008, Globacom took over the sponsorship of the GLO GHALCA top 4 tournament before venturing into GLO Ghana Premier League Season of 2008/2009 season. A similar thing also ensued in between the years of 2006 to 2008 with regards to “One Touch” (a mobile outfit for Ghana Telecom now Vodafone Ghana.)

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Ghana Athletics could take a similar model by getting a sponsor to put resources in one athlete and as the years go by the sponsorship can broaden to affect the rest. Athletes like Nadia Eke and the 4x100 relay team who have got medals on the continent should be marketable enough to get sponsorship deals to fund training camps exclusively for these athletes before major events.

Scholarships for Technical Expertise

Ghana Athletics Association have the strategy of sending athletes on scholarships but that sometimes serves a defeated purpose. This is because there a few coaches who have the expertise to prepare these athletes for tournaments on the world stage. The Ghana Athletics Association should as well encourage Athletes who are getting towards the ends of their careers to get scholarships to study coaching. Janet Amponsah is studying coaching as minor at the Middle Tennessee University. Athletes who morph into coaches after their careers will serve a great deal. Indeed, coaches who have been there and then in the will understand the terrain and propel athletes to do better and in the long run bring the medals we crave for.