?Well-known sport­ing and net­ball ad­min­is­tra­tor Lystra Lewis passed away at the Port-of-Span Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal yes­ter­day, af­ter ail­ing for some time.

Ac­cord­ing to a close rel­a­tive of the 85-year-old Lewis, the vet­er­an of­fi­cial died af­ter she suf­fered sev­er­al bouts of alzeimer.

Lewis, born in Wood­brook, the fifth of six chil­dren, was ac­tive in sport from an ear­ly age, tak­ing part in net­ball, crick­et, ta­ble ten­nis and ath­let­ics. How­ev­er it was her ad­min­is­tra­tive and coach­ing skills that made her a dom­i­nant force in net­ball, both re­gion­al­ly and glob­al­ly.

Dur­ing her ear­ly child­hood years, she played for her school, Tran­quil­li­ty be­fore join­ing Malvern Sports Club from 1930-1944. By the time Lewis was 13, she be­gan re­cruit­ing young girls to play on the Malvern team. Over the years, Lewis ac­quired knowl­edge as Sec­re­tary and Trea­sur­er of the League, where she al­so learned the fun­da­men­tals of sport ad­min­is­tra­tion. It was then that Lewis de­vot­ed her ef­forts to coach­ing and um­pir­ing the game, and coun­selling play­ers with per­son­al prob­lems.

Her per­sis­tence and ded­i­ca­tion to spread and im­prove net­ball in the re­gion, took her to An­tigua, Bar­ba­dos, British Vir­gin Is­lands, Do­mini­ca, Guyana, Montser­rat, Nevis, St Kitts and St Vin­cent, to con­duct coach­ing clin­ics, and um­pires sem­i­nars. She in­tro­duced a sys­tem to train and test um­pires in the re­gion, to en­able all mem­bers to have qual­i­fied per­son­nel. In 1945, she be­came a com­mit­tee mem­ber and Sec­re­tary/Trea­sur­er of the Port of Spain League and by 1952 coached the na­tion­al team that played against Grena­da and first timers, St Vin­cent.

By 1954 the West In­dies net­ball Board of Con­trol was formed. In­ter­na­tion­al­ly, she was the on­ly West In­di­an rep­re­sen­ta­tive at the Cey­lon Con­fer­ence in 1960 and the World Net­ball Con­fer­ence. She lat­er re­ceived a schol­ar­ship from the British Coun­cil to study phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion at Bed­ford Col­lege in Eng­land. She was al­so the first West In­di­an to be ap­point­ed to the all-Eng­lish Pan­el of Um­pires.

Up­on her re­turn home in 1961, Lewis be­came the first of­fi­cial net­ball coach and in­tro­duced the game to 300 pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools. She al­so arranged sev­er­al um­pir­ing sem­i­nars at the na­tion­al lev­el. By 1962, she was in­stru­men­tal in erect­ing the first of­fi­cial net­ball court on the Princess Build­ing Ground. A sec­ond court was built on the same ground in 1970 and named the "Lystra Courts.

Lewis found­ed the West In­dies Net­ball As­so­ci­a­tion in 1963 and coached the na­tion­al team, which played in the in­au­gur­al World Net­ball Cham­pi­onships in 1963. Since then, she has con­tin­ued to make in­valu­able con­tri­bu­tions to the game both na­tion­al­ly and glob­al­ly, and is at present an ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber of the World Net­ball Gov­ern­ing Body (IF­NA).