After two years of virtually no activity, the National Sports Centre has returned to being a hive of activity with international competition in three sports taking place at the venue over a period of a few days.

Saturday’s USATF Bermuda Championships kicked off the busy week with a three-hour track meet, which featured international athletes in 15 events. Four Bermudian athletes, Jah-Nhai Perinchief, Lamont Marshall, Dage Minors and Tre Houston featured at the event.

The main south field track at the complex was schedule to be closed to prepare for the international football match tomorrow when Bermuda’s women’s team plays a rare home match in the Concacaf W Championships Qualifier against Grenada, their final group match.

Then, starting on Wednesday, the focus will switch to the hockey pitch where the Central American and Caribbean Qualifiers will take place from April 13 to 17 involving Bermuda’s men’s and women’s teams.

“The South field track will be closed on Sunday (yesterday) after the track meet for preparations for the football match,” Craig Tyrrell, operations manager at the National Sports Centre, revealed.

“The Carifta team has been given permission to train on Sunday and Monday.”

Today the Bermuda and Grenada football teams will each have one-hour training sessions, one in the morning and the other in the evening, ahead of today’s match. Then the focus will switch to the hockey tournament when the teams will use the south field for warm-ups.

“We are extremely excited about the opportunity to be able to have these three international events taking place at the National Sports Centre in the same month,” Tyrrell said.

“It just so happens they are all taking place within seven days. We’re excited, it’s been a while since we last hosted a major event.

“Bermuda being what Bermuda is, we’re just hoping we get a lot of people coming out to support all three sports. Funny enough the track meet was originally scheduled for Tuesday the twelfth and then it changed when the USATF contacted the BNAA and the BTA got involved and they had an open date on the ninth.

“When they decided to move it to the ninth we got a call from the BFA who said ‘hey, look we have a World Cup qualifier for our women, we want to know if we can host it on the twelfth?’ The date just opened up, so everything happens for a reason!”

The month will then end with cup finals at the stadium as the football season comes to a close with the FA, Friendship and Shield finals on April 20 and 24, and youth cup finals on April 23.

“April is going to be a great month to have sports activities back on site.” Tyrrell said. “National teams are still training up here and we’re looking forward to it continuing.

“We hope that you come out to cheer on the hockey and football national teams as they represent all of Bermuda next week on home soil!”