To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

She coached and man­aged per­haps the great­est–cer­tain­ly the most suc­cess­ful–sports team ever to rep­re­sent T&T at an in­ter­na­tion­al tour­na­ment. She may not have in­tro­duced net­ball to this coun­try, but Lystra Lewis most as­sured­ly placed the sport at cen­tre stage be­cause of her en­er­gy, in­volve­ment and in­sis­tence that things should be done to a world class stan­dard. That trait, which does not set­tle for less than the best, is not ex­act­ly over­flow­ing in the T&T of the present.

We say good­bye to Lystra Lewis this week, but we recog­nise the most sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion she made to the de­vel­op­ment of net­ball here and place her right there amongst the very top con­trib­u­tors to sport and na­tion­al life. Her record shows that when she re­turned from a sports ed­u­ca­tion schol­ar­ship in Eng­land, Mrs Lewis im­me­di­ate­ly im­mersed her­self in the de­vel­op­ment of net­ball. And it should not be for­got­ten that at that time it was not uni­ver­sal­ly ac­cept­ed that women in sport was a de­sir­able way to go and that women could achieve the high­est stan­dards pos­si­ble.

One of her first achieve­ments was the con­struc­tion and de­vel­op­ment of the pub­lic net­ball courts at the then Princes Build­ing Grounds, one of the courts be­ing named af­ter May­or Ed­die Tay­lor, the oth­er, the Lystra Lewis Court. It was Lystra Lewis who in­tro­duced net­ball in the pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools sys­tem. Un­doubt­ed­ly, thou­sands of young girls be­came in­volved in net­ball and in sports gen­er­al­ly be­cause of Mrs Lewis' work amongst schools. This is not a sim­ple achieve­ment; it pos­i­tive­ly di­rect­ed the en­er­gies and am­bi­tions of young women to be­come ful­ly in­volved in phys­i­cal and sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties. It moved them en masse from sim­ply ced­ing ground to their male coun­ter­parts and en­cour­aged them to be as ex­pan­sive in their sport­ing am­bi­tions as their male coun­ter­parts.

It is from those first pub­lic courts at the Princes Build­ing Grounds that the game of net­ball be­came pop­u­lar on a broad scale.

Through­out the 1960s and 1970s, the game de­vel­oped an amaz­ing fol­low­ing with thou­sands of spec­ta­tors and a dozen top-class net­ball teams flock­ing and play­ing at the courts dai­ly. The high qual­i­ty coach­ing, the or­gan­i­sa­tion and ad­min­is­tra­tion put in­to the ven­ture by Mrs Lewis were es­sen­tial el­e­ments in the de­vel­op­ment in so short a space of time of the game here in T&T. In un­der 20 years the coun­try shared the World Cham­pi­onships of 1979 with Aus­tralia and New Zealand, coun­tries with far longer and dis­tin­guished his­to­ries in the sport com­pared to lit­tle T&T.

Mrs Lewis was known to be an in­de­fati­ga­ble work­er and de­mand­ed the same from those around her. "Thatch­er" was one of the names she was called, giv­ing some in­di­ca­tion of her dis­po­si­tion to get­ting things done. It is said she did not eas­i­ly suf­fer fools and those who would lag be­hind with the work that had to be done. Mrs Lewis was al­so in­ti­mate­ly in­volved in the de­vel­op­ment of the game in the Caribbean and rep­re­sent­ed the West In­dies at in­ter­na­tion­al net­ball con­fer­ences. She was the first West In­di­an to be­come a qual­i­fied coach tester and train­er and um­pire of the game and served faith­ful­ly in those ca­pac­i­ties at home.

As the ic­ing on a ca­reer of achieve­ment, Mrs Lewis chaired the Sports Foun­da­tion, lay­ing the base for ap­pre­ci­a­tion of those who gave their all for sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ty. If sports ad­min­is­tra­tion had the pow­er to clone some­one to de­vel­op the var­i­ous dis­ci­plines, Lystra Lewis would be the mod­el. We salute Lystra Lewis and send our con­do­lences to her fam­i­ly. The rich­ly de­served high­est award that was de­nied her in this life, she will re­ceive from her Cre­ator.