Sean Nero

Teen ti­tans Will Lee, 17 and Ja­da Re­nales, 15, beat out tal­ent­ed se­niors to emerge as the T&T Bad­minton As­so­ci­a­tion's Male and Fe­male Play­ers of the Year, re­spec­tive­ly.

The duo re­ceived their ho­n­ours to thun­der­ous ap­plause at the na­tion­al sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion's end of year award cer­e­mo­ny held at the Con­fer­ence Room at the Cen­tral In­door Sport­ing Are­na at Saith Park in Ch­agua­nas on Fri­day night.

Lee, a stu­dent at San­gre Grande Sec­ondary School, did T&T proud win­ning bronze in sin­gles com­pe­ti­tion and sil­ver in a team event at this year's Caribbean Re­gion­al Bad­minton Con­fed­er­a­tion Cham­pi­onships (Care­ba­co).

Re­nales, who at­tends As­ja Girls Col­lege, se­cured three sil­ver medals at the tour­na­ment. They were: team ju­nior; women sin­gles; women's dou­bles.

"Bad­minton gave me a tro­phy for Christ­mas," said Lee, laugh­ing. "It means a lot to me, be­cause I have been train­ing four times a week."

Re­lax­ing for him came in three forms–sleep­ing, read­ing or lis­ten­ing to the mu­sic of his favourite so­ca artiste Ker­win Du Bois.

Asked if he could play foot­ball, Lee replied, "Of course! That was the sport I used to play be­fore. I start­ed bad­minton in form one."

While ad­mit­ting that bad­minton was nowhere as close to foot­ball in na­tion­al pop­u­lar­i­ty, Lee be­lieved his chances at qual­i­fy­ing for the na­tion­al foot­ball team would have been great­ly re­duced when com­pared to his as­cen­sion in this rack­et sport.

When it came to con­vinc­ing friends to take an in­ter­est in bad­minton, Lee ad­mit­ted it was not the eas­i­est task, but he took com­fort in the fact that they would avail them­selves to see him play.

He said, "Bad­minton taught me dis­ci­pline ...stay­ing fo­cused at school. I don't get 'A's at school, but I am try­ing to. Bad­minton is help­ing me im­prove my grades." Fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of her fa­ther and for­mer na­tion­al play­er Der­win Re­nales �who held the po­si­tion of pres­i­dent of the T&T Bad­minton As­so­ci­a­tion�Re­nales (Ja­da), said every­thing about the sport ex­cit­ed her and the great thing about it was, she did not feel pres­sured.

"I grew up around bad­minton. I have a love for it. Be­ing in sport teach­es you dis­ci­pline, so you can bal­ance both sports and school work, while keep­ing ac­tive and keep­ing you away from trou­ble," she said.

If she had to ex­pand her sport­ing range the younger Re­nales would like­ly take up an­oth­er rack­et sport: ten­nis or squash.

She pre­dicts a bright fu­ture for her­self in the sport, as she con­tin­ued to work on im­prov­ing her tech­nique to en­sure se­lec­tion for in­ter­na­tion­al meets in­clud­ing Rio Olympics 2016.

Ho­n­our Roll

Play­er of the Year Male: Will Lee

Play­er of the Year Fe­male: Ja­da Re­nales

Most Out­stand­ing Play­er:

U-11 Male: Re­ece Mar­cano

U-11 Fe­male: Son­ja Cassie

U-13 Male: Vance Juter­am

U-13 Fe­male: Waynet­ta Thomas

U-15 Male: Ih­saan Fur­longe

U-15 Fe­male: Anan­da Ram­s­ingh

U-17 Male: Jerome Charles

U-17 Fe­male: Ja­da Re­nales

U-19 Male: Naim Mo­hammed

U-19 Fe­male: Kristi Reno-Singh

Se­nior Male: Al­is­tar Es­pinoza

Se­nior Fe­male: Solan­gel Guz­man

Mas­ters Male: Derek Singh

Mas­ters Male: An­dre Lewis

Mas­ters Women: Vir­ginia Char­iandy-Bal­want

Most Im­proved Male: Re­ece Mar­cano

Most Im­proved Fe­male: Ker­ian Quan Chee

Most Lo­cal Wins Male: Will Lee (Five) Lo­cal Ti­tles

Most Lo­cal Wins Fe­male: Ja­da Re­nales (Nine)

Stu­dent Spe­cial Recog­ni­tion

Sandeep Ma­haraj, Pres­i­dent's Medal (Gold) for CAPE 2014 (math, sci­ence, en­vi­ron­men­tal stud­ies

Ashisha Per­sad, Pres­i­dent's Medal (Gold) for Caribbean Sec­ondary Ex­am­i­na­tion Coun­cil O' Lev­els 2013

Xadelle Mo­hess, Pres­i­dent's Medal (Sil­ver) Caribbean Sec­ondary Ex­am­i­na­tion Coun­cil O'Lev­els 2013

Brad Bachu, Pres­i­dent's Medal (Sil­ver) Caribbean Ad­vanced Pro­fi­cien­cy Ex­ams, 2012

Spe­cial Recog­ni­tion�Sup­port

Steve Castagne

Rosan­na Ju­man

Life­long Sup­port

Ken­neth Charles, CEO So­lo Bev­er­ages

Recog­ni­tion and Ap­pre­ci­a­tion Awards

Shaun Sookdeo�Tour­na­ment Of­fi­cial

Ker­wyn Pan­tin�Cap­tain, CARE­BA­CO Team

Nekeisha Blake�Cap­tain, CAC Team

Ka­masha Robert­son �Of­fi­cial, Pan Amer­i­can Cer­ti­fied Um­pire

Trevor Smith�Tech­ni­cal As­sis­tance

Melvin Thomas�Tech­ni­cal As­sis­tance

First Cit­i­zens Sports Foun­da­tion 2014 Award (Nom­i­nees)

Ju­nior Male: Naim Mo­hammed

Ju­nior Fe­male: Ja­da Re­nales

Se­nior Male: Al­is­tair Es­pinoza

Se­nior Fe­male: Nekeisha Blake

Spon­sors Recog­ni­tion:

Car­los Lee

Mer­le Cezair

Ken­neth Charles�So­lo Bev­er­ages

Di­ane Fer­gu­son, Guardian An­gel Cre­ative Acad­e­my

Dr Lawrence Weeks, Guardian An­gel Cre­ative Acad­e­my

Rosan­na Ju­man

La­m­onth De Leon�HAD­CO

Mar­lene Mara­jh

West In­di­an Trades

Nan­cy Re­nales