Bo­bie-lee Dixon

Bas­ket­ball team Laven­tille Unit­ed, win­ner of the first Hoop of Life tour­na­ment are not rest­ing on their lau­rels af­ter beat­ing Mara­bel­la Unit­ed in the March 12 fi­nal. The play­ers are rolling up their sleeves to get on with a com­mu­ni­ty project to which half of their one mil­lion prize mon­ey, has been do­nat­ed.

De­scrib­ing the en­tire ex­pe­ri­ence as one that was up­lift­ing to the Laven­tille com­mu­ni­ty, which is oth­er­wise of­ten re­ferred to as a crime hot spot, team man­ag­er Rus­sell Ray told the T&T Guardian the tour­na­ment has in­stilled pride and joy for the play­ers who now view them­selves as am­bas­sadors of the com­mu­ni­ty, with the im­por­tant re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of be­ing pos­i­tive lead­ers.

Ray said since the tour­na­ment there have been on­go­ing meet­ings with the play­ers to dis­cuss how they in­tend to im­prove the com­mu­ni­ty with the $500,000 al­lot­ted to the com­mu­ni­ty project.

He said in speak­ing with the play­ers, they re­alised the com­mu­ni­ty project they want to de­vel­op will take more than $500,000 to com­plete, so they have gone back to the draw­ing board to see how best they can present their ideas and plans to the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

He added, the project must not be a "fly by night" thing, but one that will con­tin­ue to give back to the com­mu­ni­ty.

"It is not my do­ing, but if I had a say in any­thing, I would cre­ate a pro­gramme that would last 50 years....I would build a uni­ver­si­ty in Laven­tille," said Ray.

Asked how team­mates have been treat­ing with each oth­er since the tour­na­ment, Ray said they have al­ready re­con­vened prac­tice ses­sions as they are gear­ing up for the sec­ond tour­na­ment that is due to start in Oc­to­ber. He said the team was most­ly made up of sea­soned bas­ket­ballers ages 16 to 30, who com­pet­ed in var­i­ous na­tion­al cham­pi­onships be­fore.

"They were all very fa­mil­iar with each oth­er and even though at times there might have been some chal­lenges with re­spect to per­son­al­i­ties, they by-passed those chal­lenges, not to lose sight of the com­mon goal–to win the tour­na­ment," said Ray.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view with the team's cap­tain Ken­neth Roberts, he too de­scribed the ex­pe­ri­ence as el­e­vat­ing. He said the tour­na­ment brought a lot of peo­ple to­geth­er–there were no bor­der lines or "my turf and your turf" is­sues oc­cur­ring.

"It was re­al­ly a great op­por­tu­ni­ty, prob­a­bly the most cor­dial we have seen in years among mem­bers in the com­mu­ni­ty. Every­body just came to­geth­er for one com­mon goal–to win the tour­na­ment, so it wasn't about self at all," said Roberts, echo­ing Ray's sen­ti­ments.

He said the play­ers–all of whom are ei­ther self-em­ployed or con­tract work­ers, ex­cept for the two un­der-21 play­ers, were re­al­ly se­ri­ous about the tour­na­ment and ex­er­cised dis­ci­pline through­out–reach­ing on time for prac­tice ses­sions and present at all meet­ings.

"The coun­try re­al­ly got to see a dif­fer­ent side of Laven­tille," he said.

Roberts who views him­self as some­one who has al­ways been con­cerned about the is­sues af­fect­ing his com­mu­ni­ty, said the tour­na­ment has placed him in a po­si­tion to in­flu­ence oth­ers and he in­tends to do that pos­i­tive­ly.

Talk­ing about how the team hopes to re­vamp the com­mu­ni­ty, Roberts said URP and Cepep pro­grammes can­not teach a man to fish and feed him­self for life. He said the com­mu­ni­ty is in need of pro­grammes both aca­d­e­m­ic and oth­er­wise, that would spark change in the minds of peo­ple, es­pe­cial­ly the younger ones.

"They need to be­come self-suf­fi­cient. Too much URP and Cepep–that is just short term. What we want to give the com­mu­ni­ty are gifts that would keep on giv­ing," said Roberts.

He added: "With the $500,000 we know what we can do to start our project, but that amount is cer­tain­ly not go­ing to be sub­stan­tial for the de­vel­op­ments we want to em­bark on."

Both Ray and Roberts re­mained tight-lipped on in­for­ma­tion about the type of project be­ing un­der­tak­en, say­ing on­ly: "It is an ed­u­ca­tion­al ven­ture that would sur­prise peo­ple and it would fos­ter change in the com­mu­ni­ty.

The play­ers have al­ready re­ceived their in­di­vid­ual por­tions of the prize mon­ey ac­cord­ing to Ray. He said the $500,000 which was di­vid­ed among the 16 play­ers and four tech­ni­cal staff was de­posit­ed at the Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion (UTC), be­fore it was ac­tu­al­ly dis­trib­uted. UTC will al­so be ad­vis­ing the play­ers on sav­ing op­tions.