T&T Bad­minton As­so­ci­a­tion (TT­BA) pres­i­dent, Chan­dri­ka Ram­sub­hag, was full of praise for the T&T play­ers who re­cent­ly re­turned home with a bulging bag of medals at the con­clu­sion of the Caribbean Re­gion­al Bad­minton Con­fed­er­a­tion (CARE­BA­CO) Ju­nior Cham­pi­onships in Bar­ba­dos.

Led by Kaveer Ra­moutar and Ama­ra Urquhart, who were crowned Un­der-19 Boys’ and Girls’ Sin­gles cham­pi­ons, the T&T con­tin­gent se­cured 13 ti­tles along with eight sil­ver and 14 bronze medals for a to­tal haul of 35 medals.

Com­ment­ing on the na­tion­al ju­nior team’s per­for­mance, Ram­sub­hag said the play­ers did ex­treme­ly well.

“This is three years in a row we have ex­celled at this lev­el in the CARE­BA­CO with 13 gold medals out of 25 at stake,” said Ram­sub­hag.

The TT­BA boss added, “I want to con­grat­u­late all our ath­letes who rep­re­sent­ed us in Bar­ba­dos and spe­cial con­grat­u­la­tions to Asia Lee Waller, who com­plet­ed the tre­ble in her age-group for the sec­ond suc­ces­sive year.”

Waller won the Girls’ Un­der-13 Sin­gles, whip­ping Suri­name’s Cheyenne Ram­lal 21-8, 21-11 in the de­cider be­fore she paired with Un­der-13 Boys’ Sin­gles cham­pi­on Liam Ra­jku­mar to out­class Suri­name’s Je­re­mi Fras­er and Ram­lal in the Mixed Un­der-13 Dou­bles fi­nal 21-13, 21-12. Waller al­so com­bined with Ka­ia Jan to lift the Girls’ Dou­bles crown cour­tesy their win over Ram­lal and Mi­ley Schmeltz 19-21, 21-16, 21-19.

It rep­re­sent­ed a suc­cess­ful tran­si­tion for Waller, who in 2023 won bronze in the Un­der-11 Girls’ Sin­gles and dou­ble gold in the Mixed and Girls’ Dou­bles.

Turn­ing his at­ten­tion to the Boys’ Un­der-19 age group, Ram­sub­hag said, “We al­so cap­tured the (Un­der-19) sin­gles ti­tles for a third straight year with Kaveer Ra­moutar cap­tur­ing the crown this time around, and this is a cat­e­go­ry which was pre­vi­ous­ly dom­i­nat­ed by Ja­maica.”

Ram­sub­hag was al­so full of praise for the con­tri­bu­tion of Min­is­ter of Sport and Youth Af­fairs Phillip Watts.

“Min­is­ter Watts is new in his role, but he has al­ready demon­strat­ed his com­mit­ment to the sport of bad­minton, and he even vis­it­ed the play­ers while they were train­ing at the Na­tion­al Cy­cling Cen­ter in Bal­main, Cou­va, pri­or to their de­par­ture for Bar­ba­dos.”

“The Min­is­ter had a one-on-one chat with some of the play­ers and even asked for their in­put and ideas on how he can help im­prove what the gov­ern­ment can do for the sport. Min­is­ter Watts al­so reached out to us to­day (Thurs­day) and in­vit­ed the play­ers to meet him at the Na­tion­al Cy­cling Velo­drome in Cou­va, which fur­ther demon­strates his com­mit­ment to work­ing with the chil­dren and pro­mot­ing sport and youth.”

Look­ing ahead, Ram­sub­hag not­ed that the TT­BA will host the CARE­BA­CO Se­nior Cham­pi­onship from No­vem­ber 1 to 4, and sev­er­al coun­tries have al­ready ex­pressed their in­ten­tion to par­tic­i­pate.

“At the CARE­BA­CO Ju­nior Cham­pi­onships, I got com­mit­ment from Ja­maica, Bar­ba­dos, Suri­name, and Guade­loupe for the com­pe­ti­tion, and they have al­so ex­pressed their in­ten­tion to stay on for a fur­ther week in T&T to com­pete in the T&T Open In­ter­na­tion­al Bad­minton Tour­na­ment from No­vem­ber 5-9.”

Re­gard­ing hav­ing more ac­cess to the Na­tion­al Rac­quet Cen­ter (NRC) for train­ing, Ram­sub­hag said his as­so­ci­a­tion has seen some im­prove­ment.

He ex­plained, “Usu­al­ly when the NRC is not avail­able to us due to the host­ing of oth­er events in the oth­er sports there is no oth­er op­tion, but this year Min­is­ter Watts made the Na­tion­al Cy­cling Velo­drome in­ner area avail­able to us be­fore head­ing off to CARE­BA­CO, so we are see­ing some pos­i­tive changes in the avail­abil­i­ty of venues, but in the end it doesn’t help if the sport doesn’t have its own home. Then, we can train 24/7 and have a prop­er pro­gramme and house our ath­letes and work on all com­po­nents of their game, whether it be phys­i­cal, men­tal, and tac­ti­cal, as well as their nu­tri­tion­al habits.”

Ram­sub­hag not­ed that his as­so­ci­a­tion still has the ser­vices of their In­dia-born Eng­land-based coach Parth Mehta, who will be work­ing with the se­nior team play­ers for the CARE­BA­CO Cham­pi­onship and Open In­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tions.

“The last cou­ple of months, we were fo­cused on the ju­niors, and we have seen the re­sults. We are now hop­ing the pro­gramme for the se­niors can be just as ef­fec­tive,” said Ram­sub­hag.

T&T Ju­nior CARE­BA­CO 2025 medal haul

GS: Girls Sin­gles

BS: Boys Sin­gles

XD: Mixed Dou­bles

GD: Girls Dou­bles

BD: Boys Dou­bles

To­tal Medals (pairs count­ed as one):

Gold: 13

Sil­ver: 8

Bronze: 14

Triple-Crowned Cham­pi­on: Asia Lee Waller (Girls Un­der-13): GS, MD, GD

Un­der-11 medal­lists

Michael Balvin: gold XD, sil­ver BS, bronze BD

De­von­nye Vin­cent: gold XD, sil­ver GS, sil­ver GD

Aryan Bhagoutie: sil­ver XD, bronze BD

Ke­naiya Gan­goo: sil­ver XD, sil­ver GD

Un­der-13 medal­ists

Liam Ra­jku­mar: gold BS, gold XD, sil­ver BD

Asia Lee Waller: gold GS, gold XD, gold GD

Ka­ia Jan: gold GD

Avari Wells: sil­ver BD

Lil­lian Gor­don: bronze GD

Mia Smith: bronze GD

Zi­dan Ho­sein: bronze BD

Nayan Now­but: bronze BD

Un­der-15 medal­ists:

Liam Per­sad: gold BS, sil­ver XD, bronze BD

Chi­jioke Kalu: gold XD, gold BD, sil­ver BS

Rishelle Boodoos­ingh: sil­ver XD, bronze GD, sil­ver XD

Seren­i­ty Tin­to: bronze GD

Azaria Gask­il: gold XD, bronze GD

Tan­vi Orie: bronze GD

De­van Dur­ga: bronze BD

Naveer Sal­ick: bronze BD

Un­der-17 medal­ists:

Ethan Ram­cha­ran: bronze BS, bronze BD

Nicholi Je­boods­ingh: bronze XD, bronze BD

Aliyah Urquhart: bronze XD

Samiya Karim: gold GD

Ten­niya To­bias: gold GD

Un­der-19 medal­ists:

Kaveer Ra­moutar: gold BS, bronze XD, bronze BD

Ama­ra Urquhart: gold GS, sil­ver GD

Jace Smith: gold XD, gold BD

T’Shelle Barnes: gold XD, bronze GD

Dante Homer: gold BD, bronze BS

Is­abelle Waller: bronze GS, bronze XD, bronze GD

Jonathan Julien: bronze BD

Cheyanne Bho­la: sil­ver GD