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UWI TODAY
– SUNDAY 10 SEPTEMBER, 2017
CAMPUS HERO
What strikes you most
when you meet Nyoshia Cain, is
her confidence. At 22, she has an astonishing understanding
of who she is and what she wants out of life. There’s no
hesitation, no pausing to consider her answer; she simply
knows herself and speaks her mind.
We’re sitting inside UWI’s Sports and Physical
EducationCentre, chatting on the sidelines, amid the sounds
of a netball slamming against the floor, a whistle blowing
intermittently, and voices calling out to one another as a
team practices.
Trinidad and Tobago’s much celebrated track and field
star, and Bachelor’s degree candidate at the Faculty of Social
Sciences, stepped onto the competitive running path while
she was at The UWI, she reveals.
It was 2013. She had just graduated from the Business
Management and Technology programme at the Open
Campus and was a facilitator at an on-campus vacation
sporting camp, run by the Ministry of Sport and Youth
Affairs, when she began her training.
She’d been interested in sports, “since I know myself,”
she says. She did track in primary school, took up volleyball
and netball in secondary school – dropping out of the latter,
she admits, because she couldn’t do both sports at the same
time – and continued volleyball till she left UWI’s Open
Campus. “Then I got back into track.”
Why, I ask, having spent so many years playing
volleyball, would she leave the sport for another? She was
actually contemplating quitting sports completely. Her life-
long desire to represent T&T in volleyball had not yet been
met and she felt far from achieving her dream. She wanted
out. “But,” she says, “when I went to the sports camp, I found
the love for track.”
So, in 2013, 19-year-old Nyoshia joined the Cougars,
a track and field club in Arima. “Training was very tedious
at that point in time. I had a job,” she says, and living in
Laventille, it was difficult “having to drive from so far in the
traffic.” She stopped track and field training and resumed
volleyball. Sports had a hold on her that she couldn’t escape.
At that point, Nyoshia had no set plans, save for
completing her programme at UWI’s Open Campus and
then beginning her Bachelor’s degree. She applied to UWI
but wasn’t accepted for the 2013 intake, so she applied for
jobs and began working at the Ministry of Health.
“I was just going with the flow,” she says.
In early 2014, about three months after leaving the
Cougars, her former coach calledwith a prospect.Would she
like to give it a try? She agreed to learn more and joined the
coach for a meeting with the former president of the T&T
Paralympic Committee, Kenneth McKell. “[McKell] told
me about the opportunities to travel and just encouraged
me to come on board.” Once more, she acceded, “because I
want to give this a shot.”
Nyoshia was born with Hemihyperatrophy Syndrome,
also called Hemihyperplasia, a congenital condition, where
one side of her body develops faster than the other. “With
me,” she explains, “the left side of my body develops faster
than my right,” so the left side of her body is bigger than
her right.
Google it, she says, “you wouldn’t really see it unless
you literally examine the person, so plenty people see me
as being ‘normal.’ But when they actually look, they will
see that I stand on one of my feet, and on the other, I stand
on my toe.”
“The day-to-day standing or walking,” is painful if she’s
on her feet for too long, but she has no difficulty running.
Finding her
BALANCE
Y S E R A H A C H A M
Nyoshia Cain
tells how she
overcomes
the odds
