The To­ba­go Net­ball League got on the way on Ju­ly 11 with the tra­di­tion­al pa­rade of the teams and an ex­hi­bi­tion match that show­cased a num­ber of young­sters at Shaw Park.

The high­light of this sea­son's launch was the match fea­tur­ing Black Rock Ballers and Jets 1 show­cas­ing play­ers in the age-group six to 13 years old in the Clas­si­fi­ca­tion Tour­na­ment. Both teams boast­ed a num­ber of six, sev­en and eight-year-olds in their line-ups and the spec­ta­tors were in high praise of the tod­dlers' ef­fort in com­pet­ing against the old­er and big­ger play­ers.

The march past saw 19 reg­is­tered teams par­tic­i­pat­ing and on­ly three teams were short of the min­i­mum quo­ta of play­ers, sev­en, which they were re­quired to pa­rade with.

Sec­re­tary for the Di­vi­sion of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment and Cul­ture, Dr Denise Tsoiafatt-An­gus in de­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress said, "Net­ball is one way of re­main­ing healthy and giv­en the lev­el of par­tic­i­pa­tion from young and se­nior ath­letes in the league, one can safe­ly con­clude that the fu­ture of To­ba­go is in good hands.

"Be­yond that, we look at the sport it­self and the sport is about team­work; and I see the women here, the women and young girls here learn­ing how to re­ly on each oth­er as part of a team, learn­ing that there will be los­ing mo­ments and you com­fort each oth­er as part of that team, there will be win­ning mo­ments and you will stand shoul­der to shoul­der and cel­e­brate."

She stressed that those lead­er­ship qual­i­ties should not just be prac­tised on the courts, but should al­so be tak­en back to homes, com­mu­ni­ties and work­places."If we con­tin­ue to do that, we would cer­tain­ly build a stronger To­ba­go to­geth­er," said Dr Tsoiafatt-An­gus.In de­clar­ing the sea­son of­fi­cial­ly opened, As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary of the Di­vi­sion of Ed­u­ca­tion, Youth Af­fairs and Sport, Jo­mo Pitt said the com­mit­tee has trans­formed the face of net­ball in To­ba­go.