T&T’s elite ath­letes Ash­ton De­mur­rell, Chike Au­gus­tine and Le­ston Gor­don have all suc­cess­ful­ly grad­u­at­ed from their re­spec­tive col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties. This comes in light of sev­er­al grad­u­a­tion cer­e­monies held in the U.S over the week­end.

All three elite ath­letes re­ceived an ath­let­ic-schol­ar­ship to the U.S fol­low­ing their par­tic­i­pa­tion in the an­nu­al­ly host­ed Caribbean Hoops 25/8 Ex­po­sure Camp in Trinidad.

In the camp’s first edi­tion, Le­ston Gor­don pi­o­neered the suc­cess of the pro­gramme af­ter ob­tain­ing a schol­ar­ship to Lee Col­lege in Bay­town, Texas in 2014.

Through­out his col­lege ca­reer he would go on to play for New Mex­i­co State Uni­ver­si­ty, and West­ern New Mex­i­co Uni­ver­si­ty.

Le­ston av­er­aged 23 min­utes, 7.8 points, 5.5 re­bounds and 1.2 blocks per game in his fi­nal year at West­ern New Mex­i­co.

He now holds a BSc. in In­ter­dis­ci­pli­nary Stud­ies with fo­cus in So­ci­ol­o­gy and Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion, and hopes to con­tin­ue his ac­tive play­ing ca­reer pro­fes­sion­al­ly in Eu­rope.

In 2015, both Ash­ton and Chike ob­tained schol­ar­ships to Jack­sonville Col­lege (JC) and Mar­tin Methodist Col­lege (MMC), re­spec­tive­ly.

The Laven­tille pair went on to have suc­cess­ful ca­reers on and off the court.

Ash­ton, who hails from So­gren Trace, Laven­tille spent one (1) year at JC be­fore mov­ing to Wi­ley Col­lege in Mar­shall, Texas.

In his se­nior year at Wi­ley, Ash­ton made 30 start­ing ap­pear­ances out of the school’s 31 games, while av­er­ag­ing 20.8 min­utes, 7.9 points and 5.5 re­bounds per game.

Fur­ther­more, he record­ed a ca­reer-high 20 points and 22 re­bounds dur­ing his ju­nior year in 2018.

Out­fit­ted with a BSc. in In­ter­dis­ci­pli­nary Stud­ies with fo­cus in Child De­vel­op­ment, Ash­ton now seeks to be­come a rec­og­nized bas­ket­ball coach in and out of the U.S. to help young play­ers from T&T and the Caribbean gain ac­cess to a high­er lev­el of ed­u­ca­tion, and a fair chance to play col­le­giate bas­ket­ball.

Six-foot-10-inch for­ward, Chike Au­gus­tine who is known for his de­fen­sive pres­ence, was able to ac­cu­mu­late 294 re­bounds and 85 blocks in a to­tal of 97 games through­out his col­lege ca­reer at MMC.

In the 2016 – 2017 sea­son he was ranked no. 17 in the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of In­ter­col­le­giate Ath­let­ics (NA­IA) Di­vi­sion I South­ern States Ath­let­ic Con­fer­ence in to­tal blocks (42), and no. 18 in blocks per game (1.400).

Chike who is from Up­per Pash­ley Street, Laven­tille now holds a BSc. in Sport Man­age­ment and plans to get in­to broad­cast­ing jour­nal­ism.