sto­ries by NIGEL SI­MON

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

nigel.si­mon@guardian.co.tt

Hay­den Mitchell, pres­i­dent of the Ten­nis As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (TATT), says the lo­cal body should feel very proud about hav­ing com­plet­ed the third it­er­a­tion of its ‘Sum­mer of Ten­nis’ over the pe­ri­od Ju­ly to Au­gust at the Na­tion­al Rac­quet Cen­tre, Or­ange Grove Road, Tacarigua. 

Dur­ing that pe­ri­od, the ‘Sum­mer of Ten­nis’ in­volved sev­en events, which in­clud­ed the SR4 Un­der-12 De­vel­op­ment Cham­pi­onships, Davis Cup (men) Amer­i­c­as Group IV Qual­i­fiers, Bil­lie Jean King Cup (women) Group III by Gains­bridge Qual­i­fiers, Con­fed­er­a­tion of Ten­nis of Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (COTECC) Un­der-12/U-14 Sum­mer Bowl, and the back-to-back In­ter­na­tion­al Ten­nis Fed­er­a­tion (ITF) Un­der-18 Sum­mer Bowl and Car­ni­val Cup events. 

Ac­cord­ing to Mitchell, the de­ci­sion to host the event for this pe­ri­od was strate­gic and in align­ment with the Gov­ern­ment’s na­tion­al sport pol­i­cy ob­jec­tive, which is to bol­ster sport tourism and to make this coun­try the re­gion­al hub for sports. 

He said, “Based on what has tran­spired, TATT can boast of the suc­cess­ful ex­e­cu­tion of the slate of events, which al­lowed the ide­al en­vi­ron­ment for top ju­nior and se­nior ten­nis ath­letes to thrive while so­lid­i­fy­ing T&T’s po­si­tion as the re­gion­al hub of ten­nis and ten­nis de­vel­op­ment. 

Look­ing back on the SR4 U-12 De­vel­op­ment Cham­pi­onship, Mitchell said, “Eight coun­tries par­tic­i­pat­ed (Aru­ba, Bar­ba­dos, Cu­ra­cao, Grena­da, Suri­name, St Lu­cia, St Kitts/Nevis, and host T&T).”

As the host coun­try, T&T was el­i­gi­ble to en­list two boys teams and two girls teams, and the top-ranked lo­cal ath­letes were in­vit­ed to tri­als, af­ter which the teams were se­lect­ed as fol­lows: Josi­ah Hills, Se­bastien Plim­mer, and Fa­vian Dates (Boys Team #1), Zelig Williams, Ryan Steuart, and Ab­hishek Ramdeen (Boys Team #2), Make­da Bain, Suri Ram­cha­ran, and Ysanne Williams (Girls Team #1), and Keyah Roberts, Samiyah Mo­hammed, and Is­abel­la Ramb­ha­jan (Girls Team #2). 

“At the end of the event, T&T Boys #1 and Boys #2 teams placed first and sec­ond re­spect­ful­ly, while T&T Girls #1 team placed first, with both first-place T&T teams qual­i­fy­ing to com­pete in the fi­nals to be held in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic lat­er this year.”

Next up was the Davis Cup, and this year marked the third con­sec­u­tive year that the Davis Cup event was staged in Trinidad and fea­tured An­tigua & Bar­bu­da, Aru­ba, Cu­ba, Haiti, Hon­duras, Nicaragua, St. Lu­cia, the US Vir­gin Is­lands, and our own men’s team of Kam­ran McIn­tosh Ross, Lu­ca Sham­si, Tim Pasea, Al­i­jah Leslie, and Kale Dal­la Cos­ta. For this tour­na­ment, the T&T team was made up of a group of young and ea­ger play­ers who were cap­tained by ex­pe­ri­enced and cer­ti­fied coach Dun­stan De­noon, who al­so served as the Davis Cup coach when the event was staged here in 2022 and 2023. 

De­spite not fin­ish­ing in the top two pro­mo­tion spots, Mitchell said that TATT recog­nised that this event would ul­ti­mate­ly be de­vel­op­men­tal for the lo­cal team, bear­ing in mind that the stage was a grand one for the ath­letes, most of whom were play­ing at this lev­el for the first time. 

“Our team placed ninth, miss­ing out on a high­er place­ment by a just few match­es, and the as­so­ci­a­tion proud­ly ac­knowl­edges Kam­ran McIn­tosh Ross, who faced match­es every day and re­mained un­de­feat­ed,” he said. 

The Bil­lie Jean King Cup was host­ed here in T&T by the as­so­ci­a­tion for the first time ever, and it was al­so the first time since 2019 that T&T was par­tic­i­pat­ing against the likes of An­tigua & Bar­bu­da, Aru­ba, Ba­hamas, Bar­ba­dos, Bermu­da, Cos­ta Ri­ca, El Sal­vador, and Ja­maica. 

He said, “Sim­i­lar to the Davis Cup men’s team, the Bil­lie Jean King Cup women’s team com­prised a group of young and ea­ger ath­letes and was cap­tained by An­naleise Rose, who was strate­gi­cal­ly se­lect­ed as she is cer­ti­fied and very ex­pe­ri­enced and had pre­vi­ous­ly rep­re­sent­ed the coun­try. 

“For this year, Rose’s role was that of ‘play­ing coach,’ and oth­er mem­bers of the team were Yolande Lea­cock, Jor­dane Dook­ie, Aal­isha Alex­is, and Char­lotte Ready.

“In the end, T&T end­ed in the fifth po­si­tion, miss­ing out on ‘play­ing for pro­mo­tion’ to Bil­lie Jean King Cup Group II by just one (1) match, which was a good show­ing.” 

The Ten­nis As­so­ci­a­tion’s stag­ing of the COTECC and ITF U 18 Events was al­so suc­cess­ful­ly ex­e­cut­ed, al­low­ing lo­cals to com­pete (at home), ex­pe­ri­ence dif­fer­ent game play­ing styles, win match­es, gain points, and ul­ti­mate­ly im­prove on their re­gion­al rank­ing (COTECC—Con­fed­er­a­tion of Ten­nis of Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean), as well as their in­ter­na­tion­al rank­ing. 

Nu­mer­ous lo­cal ath­letes took ad­van­tage of the op­por­tu­ni­ty to par­tic­i­pate in the COTECC U-12/U-14 Sum­mer Bowl, ITF U-18 Sum­mer Bowl, and Car­ni­val Cup. For the ITF Sum­mer Bowl, Dal­la Cos­ta ad­vanced to semi­fi­nals in both sin­gles and dou­bles, hav­ing teamed up with Ron Roopesh (Great Britain) for the dou­bles, while Reina Alex­is and Em-Miryam Camp­bell-Smith ad­vanced to the dou­bles semi­fi­nals, and Madi­son Khan al­so ad­vanced to the dou­bles semi­fi­nals with her USA part­ner Mil­da­lyn D’Aguilar. In the ITF Car­ni­val Cup, Shiloh Walk­er teamed up with USA Mar­cel­la Rover­si to win the girls dou­bles, while Zach­ery Byng and B’jorn Hall emerged win­ners of boys dou­bles, their sec­ond tour­na­ment win af­ter suc­cess in St Lu­cia ear­li­er in Ju­ly. Hall al­so made his mark by ad­vanc­ing to the semi­fi­nals in the boys sin­gles, and based on these re­sults, many of our top ju­nior ath­letes are bet­ter ranked hav­ing par­tic­i­pat­ed in their re­spec­tive cat­e­gories of Sum­mer of Ten­nis events. 

Look­ing back on the sched­ule of events, Mitchell said, “TATT takes the op­por­tu­ni­ty to salute all ath­letes for ex­cep­tion­al per­for­mances and stay­ing the course to­wards ten­nis achieve­ment and per­son­al growth through their pas­sion for the sport.” 

In mov­ing for­ward, Mitchell said the as­so­ci­a­tion re­mains com­mit­ted to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment through ten­nis and wel­comes fu­ture col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Min­istry of Cul­ture and Tourism. 

“The as­so­ci­a­tion al­so ex­tends im­mense grat­i­tude to the Min­istry of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T (SporTT), B Mo­bile Busi­ness, Massy Mo­tors, Blue Wa­ters, and all me­dia hous­es for the un­wa­ver­ing sup­port,” said Mitchell.