The 3x3 bas­ket­ball team of twin broth­ers Ah­keel and Ah­keem Boyd, Mori­ba De Fre­itas and Chike Au­gus­tine, won T&T’s first medal, a bronze, at San­ti­a­go 2023 Pan Amer­i­can Games in Chile, yes­ter­day.

At a packed house in the Span­ish Sta­di­um in the Las Con­des re­gion, the quar­tet met the 45th-ranked Venezuela in the third-place match and to chants of “TTO, TTO”, the 82nd-ranked T&T team won 21-20 thanks to a two-point buzzer shot from Ah­keel. It sent the T&T sup­port­ers in­to fran­tic cel­e­bra­tion to cheer on the bronze medal­lists.

“It feels amaz­ing,” said an emo­tion­al Ah­keel ‘Smal­ly” Boyd, soon af­ter the match, with tears of joy in his eyes. “This is ac­tu­al­ly T&T’s first medal in 3x3 bas­ket­ball. Plen­ty of peo­ple didn’t know who we were are, so we had to let them know who we were. This wasn’t for us, this was for T&T.”

“Every­body back home was watch­ing us. I’m sure every­body is proud of us for bring­ing home this medal.”

Two hours ear­li­er, T&T lost to the Unit­ed States (No. 2), 21-9 in the semi­fi­nals. How­ev­er, the Christo­pher Jack­son Charles-coached men didn’t drop their heads but in­stead came out on a mis­sion.

In the bronze medal match, De Fre­itas lost the coin toss but his side caused a turnover and scored the first bas­ket of the match. In fact, they went on to score five unan­swered points to lead 5-0 be­fore the Venezue­lans could pro­duce a bas­ket to trail 5-1 at the first break with 7.39 re­main­ing on the clock.

On the re­sump­tion, it was all T&T again as the oth­er twin, Ah­keem, got in on the ac­tion. He at­tacked the bas­ket and was fouled hard which the ref­er­ee called un­sports­man­like. He stepped up and net­ted both free throws to put T&T ahead 8-1.

Venezuela did not go away though and ral­lied back to tie the score at 13. From there the teams trad­ed bas­kets and at the next time out, the scores were locked 16-16 with 1.35 to go.

The next two bas­kets came off of Ah­keel who drove the ball for a layup and then hit a jump shot just at the free throw line to give T&T a two-point (18-16) ad­van­tage with 50.0 on the clock. T&T was back in con­trol again un­til Au­gus­tine was guilty of a foul putting Nel­son Pala­cios on the line for two shots which he con­nect­ed to tie the scores again (18-18).

Soon af­ter Venezuela got its first lead of the match, 20-19, and was sens­ing vic­to­ry. That was un­til Ah­keel spoiled the par­ty with a shot from be­yond the arc for the win.

Ah­keel top scored with 12 points and his twin broth­er chipped in with sev­en while “re­bound­ing duo” De Fre­itas and Au­gus­tine net­ted a point each, crown­ing off a bril­liant team ef­fort that made coach/man­ag­er Charles proud.

He said, “Those guys re­al­ly played. The team and the staff did this for T&T. I hope that the pow­ers that be un­der­stand that the young men need sup­port to get the sport to grow. It was a great vic­to­ry for T&T.

“As a coach for these guys, it was re­al great to win some­thing at this lev­el.”

The Unit­ed States went on to take the gold, beat­ing Chile 21-15 while their women’s team de­feat­ed Colom­bia to seal the top spot on the podi­um af­ter a 21-14 win over Colom­bia.

Chile women emerged the win­ner in a rugged bronze medal match against Puer­to Ri­co, 22-11.

T&T def­i­nite­ly won some new fans here in San­ti­a­go.

The at­trac­tion start­ed in the group stages, af­ter the lo­cal bas­ket­ballers sealed a huge up­set vic­to­ry over the Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (CAC) bronze medal­list and 59th-ranked Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, 22-15, in their open­ing Group B match. They lat­er suf­fered a 21-6 de­feat to reign­ing CAC cham­pi­on Puer­to Ri­co on Sat­ur­day. T&T still earned the sec­ond spot in the group fol­low­ing the pre­lim­i­nary round af­ter the Puer­to Ri­cans knocked out the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, 21-15 on Sun­day.

That day, T&T put on a dom­i­nat­ing per­for­mance to elim­i­nate the 35th-ranked Brazil, 20-19, in an ex­cit­ing quar­ter­fi­nal match.

“I’m speech­less at the mo­ment. A proud bunch of guys come out here and put in the work back home. We want­ed to come here and change some­thing and here we are car­ry­ing home a medal for our coun­try, just proud, just proud!” said Ah­keem who was al­so very emo­tion­al af­ter the win.

Nikoli Black­man was left ru­ing a poor start as he missed out on a place in the medal round of the men’s 100-me­tre freestyle yes­ter­day af­ter fin­ish­ing sixth af­ter clock­ing 51.01 sec­onds at the Aquat­ic Cen­tre.

He tried to make amends in the B fi­nal but in­stead placed sixth with a time of 50.81 sec­onds. This fol­lowed his in­clu­sion af­ter the Brazil team had one too many swim­mers in the event. Af­ter the pre­lim­i­nary heats, his time placed him 17th over­all among the 31 par­tic­i­pants.

The 18-year-old T&T swim­mer was not im­pressed by his open­ing swim.

The ex­e­cu­tion of the race was not good at all. The whole race wasn’t good. Fifty (50), be­hind by a lot, and then by the time I reached the wall, it was not enough time to catch back peo­ple so it re­al­ly wasn’t a good race for me,” said Black­man, who the day be­fore raced in the men’s 200m freestyle and fin­ished fourth in the B fi­nal.

“I think from all the meets I’ve been to, you re­al­ly just lose your nerves be­hind the block so it’s just to get ac­cus­tomed and fo­cus on your own race and do what you have to do.”

Coun­try­man Zarek Wil­son, com­pet­ing in his sec­ond and fi­nal event at San­ti­a­go 2023, set­tled for 21st place from the 24 swim­mers in the men’s 100m back­stroke af­ter clock­ing 58.37 sec­onds, to place eighth in the fourth and fi­nal heat, swim­ming out of lane eight.

Black­man will tack­le his third and fi­nal event to­day, in the men’s 50m freestyle, an event which brought him world fame as a ju­nior ath­lete last month. The Uni­ver­si­ty of Ten­nessee fresh­man won gold in the race at the World Ju­nior Swim­ming Cham­pi­onships held in Ne­tanya, Is­rael.

He will swim in lane six in heat three against Ja­maican Sidrell Williams, Pana­man­ian Jean­car­lo Calderon, Stephen Calkins from Cana­da, Venezue­lan Diego Mas Fraiz, Brazil’s Marce­lo Chierigh­i­ni, Aru­ba’s Mikel Schreud­ers, and Elias Ardiles of the host coun­try.

“Noth­ing but pace, hope­ful­ly, get a bet­ter start this time,” said Black­man, who al­so reached the top of the podi­um in the 50m freestyle at the Com­mon­wealth Youth Games host­ed in T&T in Au­gust, look­ing ahead to to­day’s race.

Al­so com­pet­ing to­day for T&T is Cherelle Thomp­son in the women’s 50m freestyle event. She will dive in­to the ac­tion in lane five in heat three against Ja­maicans Emi­ly Mac­Don­ald, Rafaela Fer­nandi­no of Pe­ru, Ar­gen­tin­ian An­drea Berri­no, Cana­da’s Mag­gie Mac­Neil, El Sal­vador’s Ma­ri­na Spadoni, Em­ma Har­vey of Bermu­da, and Maria San­tis Mehia of the In­de­pen­dent Ath­letes Team.

T&T trio Nicholas Paul, Kwe­si Brown, and Zion Puli­do will chase gold to­day in the men’s team sprint event when track cy­cling ac­tion rides off, away at the Velo­drome.

At the pre­vi­ous edi­tion of the Pan Am Games in Li­ma, Pe­ru, the lo­cal team which in­clud­ed Paul had sprint­ed to gold but was stripped af­ter then team­mate Njisane Phillip was dis­qual­i­fied for a pos­i­tive cannabis sam­ple, a pro­hib­it­ed sub­stance. The third mem­ber of the team was Keron Bram­ble.

How­ev­er, Paul will look to put that bad mem­o­ry be­hind and fo­cus on suc­cess­ful­ly lead­ing the lo­cal team out of the qual­i­fi­ca­tion round which starts at 10.45 am (T&T time).

The fi­nal is sched­uled for 6.20 pm.

Be­fore that though, Ak­il Camp­bell will chase glo­ry in the men’s om­ni­um, start­ing with the scratch race at 10.08 am (T&T time).

Paul, the world record in the men’s 200m fly­ing start, will be back in ac­tion to­mor­row in the men’s sprint event aim­ing to de­fend his ti­tle.