A five-day intensive Sports Administration course for Presidents of National Sports Associations organized by the Gambia 
National Olympic Committee (GNOC) kicked off on Monday November 23rd, at the Olympic House.
The course aims at helping to enhance and ensure sports administrators strive for effective management and improve on their administrative approach towards sport and sports development.
The course slated from 23rd to the 27th November 2015 at the Resource Center of the Olympic House, is been directed by EBou Joof and Lamin Sanneh Gambia’s Olympic Solidarity accredited course Directors.
Speaking at the opening ceremony, Ebou Joof, one of the course directors revealed that the areas to be covered include fair play, value and ethics of sports, office holders and their functions, challenges faced by sports administrators, women in sports, leadership, Sports financing among others.
He added that at the end of the day, they expect our top sports administrators would be able to identify what is right or not in Sports management.
He said the primary objectives of any good Sports administrator is the development of the athletes and urged the participants to be more participatory during the course.
The administrative officer of GNOC Muhammed K. Janneh said one of the primary objectives of Olympic Committee is to see highly trained and well-motivated Sport personnel so that they can deliver as expected.
He urged the participants to take the course seriously as one need to complete the 36 hours contact time during the course before he or she can be certified.
Speaking at the ceremony, the Executive Director of National Sports council, Marcel Mendy said the Ministry of Youth and Sports and the National Sports Council are pleased to be associated with this very important programme and hailed the GNOC leadership for the initiative.
Mr. Mendy acknowledged the existence of lot of shortcomings in administration of our Sports Associations.
He went further to explain the numerous problems his council is facing due to the hug administrative deficiency of Sports Associations as many of them are not aware of the primary channel of communication between government and the Associations.
“You cannot bypass the Sports Council and write directly to the Minister of Youth and Sports. Even myself as Executive Director of National Sports council, I cannot write to the Minister directly, all my correspondence should be directed to the Permanent Secretary” he stressed.
Mr. Mendy joined Mr. Joof to call on Sports administrators to have the interest of the athletes at first and listen to their concerns for the interest of Sports.
Declaring the training course open, the Secretary General of GNOC Mr. Peter Prom said the GNOC deemed necessary to organize this course after realizing lot of deficiency in managing our Sports.
He said he was impressed with the turnout of participants as the big guns in Sports management in the country have all responded to the call.
Mr Prom added there are good signs that our Sports is developing citing the performance of the Beach Volleyball team in Rio 2016 qualifiers, the Basketball team performance In Bamako and Fye Sarr standing in Judo at the All African Games. But he was quick to note that the performance of our athletes should march with standard Sports administration otherwise the future will be doom.
He reassured Sports administrators of GNOC continuous support to the development of Sports in the country.
