Ten young crick­eters from Todd’s Road got the op­por­tu­ni­ty of a life­time re­cent­ly, when they paid a cour­tesy call on Min­is­ter of Sport and Youth Af­fairs Phillip Watts.

The chil­dren, who were par­tic­i­pants in the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T’s (SporTT) JA­VA Crick­et Pro­gramme, vis­it­ed Watts’ Port-of-Spain of­fice along­side SporTT CEO Ja­son Williams.

Dur­ing their vis­it, the young crick­eters, who live in Watts’ Tal­paro con­stituen­cy, not on­ly en­gaged in in­sight­ful di­a­logue with him and got a chance to see how he runs his min­istry, but al­so took in the in­spir­ing view of the Port-of-Spain wa­ter­front from the min­is­ter’s of­fice, a mo­ment that many of them de­scribed as un­for­get­table.

The JA­VA Crick­et Pro­gramme, which ran dur­ing the school va­ca­tion pe­ri­od (Ju­ly 14-Au­gust 28), is a flag­ship grass­roots ini­tia­tive sup­port­ed by SporTT and the min­istry. It catered to boys and girls aged 7-17 and de­vel­oped their crick­et­ing skills while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly nur­tur­ing dis­ci­pline, healthy lifestyles, team­work, and re­silience. This year’s edi­tion fea­tured 2,000 par­tic­i­pants across 47 com­mu­ni­ty venues na­tion­wide, with a fo­cus on tal­ent iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and path­ways to zon­al com­pe­ti­tion.

Dur­ing the vis­it to the min­istry, the young crick­eters proud­ly shared their camp high­lights and voiced their ea­ger­ness to re­turn next year.

Watts en­cour­aged them to hold on to the lessons sport teach­es be­yond the field.

“Al­ways re­mem­ber, crick­et will teach you about team­work and re­silience. Whether you one day make it to the na­tion­al team or not, your re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is to con­tin­ue sup­port­ing each oth­er, be­cause this is how you will build your com­mu­ni­ty and your­self,” the min­is­ter ad­vised the young par­tic­i­pants.