Na­tion­al stand-out Stephen "Lighter" Lewis walked away with the cov­et­ed Most Valu­able Play­er (MVP) award in the Pre­mier Di­vi­sion when the bpTT Ma­yaro Bas­ket­ball League held its prize dis­tri­b­u­tion func­tion for last sea­son at the Ma­yaro In­door Sport Fa­cil­i­ty re­cent­ly.

Lewis al­so won the in­di­vid­ual award for most three-point­ers as his team, De­fence Force, cap­tured the cham­pi­onship tro­phy for win­ning the Pre­mier Di­vi­sion in their de­but year in the league.

De­fend­ing cham­pi­ons De­tour Shak At­tack were out­played in the two-match se­ries fi­nal last week­end, and had to set­tle for run­ner-up po­si­tion. Third place went to Pris­ons.

ISOTECH Rio Rap­tors were crowned cham­pi­ons of the Com­mu­ni­ty Di­vi­sion, while Mal­oney Sto­ries of Suc­cess (SOS) took home the win­ning tro­phy for the Un­der-19 Di­vi­sion.

The Ma­yaro Bas­ket­ball League is spon­sored by en­er­gy com­pa­ny BP Trinidad and To­ba­go (bpTT) with sup­port from the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC). It is ad­min­is­tered by the South Cor­ner Bas­ket­ball Foun­da­tion (SCBF).

Un­der­scor­ing bpTT's con­tin­u­ing sup­port for the de­vel­op­ment of bas­ket­ball and oth­er sports in the south-east­ern com­mu­ni­ties was Matthew Pierre, com­mu­ni­ty li­ai­son of­fi­cer.

"Al­though the re­cent years have been chal­leng­ing fi­nan­cial­ly, bpTT is ful­ly com­mit­ted to its pol­i­cy of hu­man de­vel­op­ment, with sports be­ing a cor­ner­stone of the com­pa­ny's thrust. One of the pre-req­ui­sites for spon­sor­ship is the in­vest­ment by sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions in the youth of the re­gion. We need to move bas­ket­ball from the lo­cal lev­el to na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al lev­els," urged Pierre, him­self a for­mer na­tion­al and Cari­com bas­ket­ball star.

He con­grat­u­lat­ed the or­gan­is­ers for en­cour­ag­ing top na­tion­al teams, such as De­fence Force, Shak At­tack and the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, to show­case their tal­ents in the Ma­yaro league, there­by mo­ti­vat­ing bud­ding play­ers to pur­sue the sport and take it to high­er lev­els.

Mak­ing a call for all stake­hold­ers to get to­geth­er to de­vel­op bas­ket­ball in the re­gion, Pierre al­so ap­pealed for com­mu­ni­ty sup­port to "bring back the crowds to bas­ket­ball".

SCBF pres­i­dent Kwa­mi Alex­is thanked the spon­sors for their sup­port of the league, not­ing that its scope had broad­ened since its in­au­gur­al edi­tion a few years ago to in­clude teams from all parts of Trinidad. The foun­da­tion, he said, would make a spe­cial ef­fort to run games in dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties to spread its ap­peal.

HO­N­OUR ROLL

Pre­mier Di­vi­sion

Cham­pi­ons: De­fence Force

Run­ners-Up: De­tour Shak At­tack

Third Place: Pris­ons

Com­mu­ni­ty Di­vi­sion

Cham­pi­ons: ISOTECH Rio Rap­tors

Run­ners-Up: MCTV/RL­RA Am­bas­sadors

Third Place: High Volt­age

U-19 Di­vi­sion

Cham­pi­ons: Mal­oney Sto­ries of Suc­cess (SOS)

Run­ners-Up: Laven­tille Hawks

Third Place: Grande All Stars

Most Valu­able Play­er

Pre­mier: Stephen 'Lighter' Lewis

(De­fence Force)

Com­mu­ni­ty: Christo­pher Lares

(ISOTECH Rio Rap­tors)

U-19: Charles Williams

(Mal­oney SOS)

Most three-Point­ers

Pre­mier: Stephen 'Lighter' Lewis

(De­fence Force)

Com­mu­ni­ty: Nathan Lewis

(ISOTECH Rio Rap­tors)

Most Points

Pre­mier: Ako Pas­call (Cale­do­nia)

Com­mu­ni­ty: Christop­er Lares

(ISOTECH Rio Rap­tors)

Most Promis­ing Play­er

Pre­mier: Kens­ley Sandy (De­fence Force)

Com­mu­ni­ty: Ja­mal John

(MCTV/RL­RA Am­bas­sadors)

Youngest Play­er

Sha­keem Valere (Grande All Stars)