It’s been some time since a T&T men’s bas­ket­ball team has won any type of sil­ver­ware.

The drought end­ed on Mon­day, when the lo­cal team of twin broth­ers Ah­keel “Smal­ly” Boyd and Ah­keem “Fat­to” Boyd, Mori­ba De Fre­itas, the team’s cap­tain and Chike Au­gus­tine com­bined to bag a bronze medal in the 3x3 bas­ket­ball com­pe­ti­tion to win T&T’s first medal at the Pan Amer­i­can Games in San­ti­a­go, Chile.

Coached and man­aged by Christo­pher Jack­son Charles with train­er Wayne “Sam­my” Samuel as part of the sup­port staff as well as team phys­io­ther­a­pist Je­lani Bap­tiste, the quar­tet cel­e­brat­ed reach­ing the podi­um for the first time at a Pan Amer­i­can Games in the his­to­ry of the sport.

“This is love­ly,” said De Fre­itas, who Spoke to Guardian Me­dia Sports, af­ter the win at the Span­ish Sta­di­um of Las Con­des. “Plen­ty of work to do, be­cause we want­ed gold but we have to take what we get right now.”

T&T, 82nd on the men’s FI­BA rank­ings, up­staged the No. 35th-ranked Venezuela, 21-20, in the third-place match on the fi­nal night of ac­tion in the 3x3 com­pe­ti­tion. This af­ter the lo­cal unit lost to the even­tu­al gold medal­list USA (No 2) in the semi­fi­nals, 21-9 ear­li­er in the day. The Amer­i­cans met the team from the host coun­try and pre­vailed, 21-15, in the ti­tle match.

“This is show­ing the Fed­er­a­tion, they have some work to do in build­ing Trinidad bas­ket­ball,” added De Fre­itas, di­rect­ing his com­ment to the Na­tion­al Bas­ket­ball Fed­er­a­tion of T&T (NBFTT), the gov­ern­ing body for the sport, lo­cal­ly.

Coach Charles in his post-match com­ments stat­ed that “the young men need sup­port to get the sport to grow”.

He said: “That’s why we need sup­port. The sup­port wasn’t at its best but we came and we pulled through so it’s a great vic­to­ry for T&T.”

The bronze medal suc­cess was not on­ly en­joyed by the T&T sup­port­ers but al­so by the team’s new-found Chilean fans. Ahead of the match, the young­sters lined the en­trance to the court just to get a ‘high five” or a pho­to op­por­tu­ni­ty with the T&T play­ers, who were hap­py to oblige.

“It’s amaz­ing. The Chile fans are amaz­ing. They mo­ti­vat­ed me,” said Fat­to, who added, “I was say­ing to my broth­er I nev­er once signed an au­to­graph be­fore, I didn’t know how it felt. The kids were just amaz­ing!”

The Mal­oney-born bas­ket­baller got emo­tion­al when speak­ing of the care and sup­port from his moth­er, say­ing: “I love her so much. This is for you. This is for my daugh­ter. This is for the com­mu­ni­ty!”

Fat­to and his broth­er were key for T&T of­fen­sive­ly. He pro­duced sev­en points while Smal­ly notched a match-high 12 points.

“I put in the work every sin­gle day, every sin­gle day I put in the work and every­body says that ‘Smal­ly’ is the best play­er in the coun­try but I don’t want to be the best play­er in T&T, I want to be the best play­er over­all in the world,” said a pas­sion­ate Smal­ly.