Last evening September 15th, 2022, Kyron McMaster was award a $38,000 check from Sports Minister Sharie de Castro on behalf of the Government of the Virgin Islands upon his welcome back to the territory.
McMaster recently completed very successful athletic achievements over the last two seasons.
McMaster who is a two-time Commonwealth Games and North American, Central American & Caribbean Athletic Association (NACAC) 400-metre hurdles said, “You know I slipped through the cracks, and I went abroad. I’ve been around the block. It is easy to say I have seen the highest of the highs in the track and field world. I’ve walked the red carpet of functional events in the track and field world. But I have been at the lows. I’ve been in eighth place consecutively many times, but they never speak about that. I know what the future athletes have coming up for them and if you ain’t mentally strong, it is easy to quit and easy to stop if you don’t have that push.”
He added, “So, I feel that’s why it is imperative, and it is necessary now that we have to target the younger ones. I think they are blinded by not seeing the success of working hard because they see somebody like me going out there and from their perspective, he keeps finishing fourth and there is no real winning or earning in that from a young person’s perspective. So, that is why it is easy for them to shy away,”
McMaster, has a number of speaking engagements scheduled at local public schools while on his visit home.
Also addressing his success, Sports Minister Sharie de Castro spoke about her interactions with McMaster.
Minster de Castro said, “Kyron is young, and he’s younger than me. But when you’re going to try to speak with him about what he’s done, and how much it means; instead of projecting it on himself, he speaks about how he had to do it for the country and how he felt like we needed something, to be uplifted, and we needed this moment, even more than him. And I know that he had recently been recovering from an injury. So, for him to put himself on the back burner like that and speak about our country and what it would mean to us, it taught me truly just in that short space of time who he is, and it spoke to his character.”