Re­cent­ly, I was telling a mentee of the im­por­tance of own­ing and us­ing a good dic­tio­nary.

Most words have mul­ti­ple mean­ings so in or­der to get a full un­der­stand­ing of words or a par­tic­u­lar sub­ject it’s nec­es­sary to have a com­plete un­der­stand­ing of words and phras­es. For ex­am­ple:

Ac­com­plish — (1) to bring about a re­sult by ef­fort; (2) to bring to com­ple­tion; (3) to suc­ceed.

Act — The do­ing of a thing; deed.

Ac­tion — (1) A thing done; deed; (2) the ac­com­plish­ment of a thing usu­al­ly over a pe­ri­od of time.

Movers and Shak­ers — Peo­ple who make things hap­pen.

Bend over back­wards — To go be­yond the nor­mal ex­pec­ta­tions in or­der to cre­ate a pos­i­tive ef­fect.

Con­quer — To gain mas­tery over or win by over­com­ing ob­sta­cles or op­po­si­tion.

Courage — An act that demon­strates men­tal or moral strength to ven­ture, per­se­vere, and with­stand fear or dif­fi­cul­ty.

At the Wildey Gym­na­si­um of the Garfield Sobers Sports Com­plex in Bar­ba­dos, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Un­der-16 net­ball team ac­com­plished his­to­ry when they won the Jean Pierre Caribbean Youth Net­ball Cham­pi­onship for the first time in 21 years. They con­quered.

Let’s look at some quick facts.

Trinidad and To­ba­go had play­ers named among the “Best 16” at the 21st Jean Pierre Caribbean Youth Net­ball Cham­pi­onship, fol­low­ing their his­toric tri­umph in se­cur­ing their first-ever Caribbean U-16 ti­tle. T&T took home sev­er­al team awards, in­clud­ing “Best Team on Pa­rade”, “Most Dis­ci­plined Team”, and “Team with the Best Spir­it”.

They al­so won “Best Goal Av­er­age”, hav­ing scored 181 goals and con­ced­ed just 81, and were named “Best De­fend­ing Team”.

Head coach So­journ­er Hyles-Lewis made a plea for more sup­port for the game that brought a World net­ball ti­tle to the coun­try in 1979.

T&T played un­beat­en to win their first-ever U-16 ti­tle in the 21-year his­to­ry of the tour­na­ment, named af­ter the leg­endary Jean Pierre.

An­oth­er point to note were the fac­tors that con­tributed to the team’s suc­cess in­clud­ing the bond­ing of the play­ers and the qual­i­ty of the prepa­ra­tion that came over a two-year pe­ri­od.

Coach Hyles-Lewis al­so high­light­ed the role the par­ents of the play­ers played in get­ting the team ready for the tour­na­ment.

Shi­an Lewis was named the “Most Valu­able Play­er” of the team and se­cured the “High­est Shoot­er” ac­co­lade.

Team cap­tain Makay­la Grant was ad­judged the “Most Ac­cu­rate Shoot­er” while she and Lewis teamed up with Na­talia Chap­man and Teni­cia Goodridge to lead T&T to win the “Best Shoot­ing” team prize.

Lewis was among six T&T play­ers named among the best 16 play­ers of the tour­na­ment. The oth­ers were Ne­fer­ti­ti Bar­ring­ton, Sophia Her­nan­dez, Kalvinelle Roberts, Kelsea Gard­ner, and Aneisha Hyles.

Lewis al­so com­pet­ed at the Carif­ta Track and Field Tri­als the day, be­fore fly­ing out to Bar­ba­dos to join her net­ball col­leagues. She qual­i­fied to rep­re­sent T&T in the Girls’ U-17 800 me­tres and 1,500m at the Carif­ta Games at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo, Port-of-Spain.

Con­grat­u­la­tions to the movers and shak­ers who bent over back­wards to take the re­quired ac­tion dur­ing the past two years. It would have tak­en acts of courage by the play­ers called up to pre­pare, coach­es, train­ers, the man­ag­er, T&T Net­ball Lead­er­ship, par­ents, and guardians.

This note­wor­thy win has sig­nif­i­cant im­pli­ca­tions for T&T net­ball. Build­ing on this his­toric vic­to­ry will be a chal­lenge, giv­en T&T’s propen­si­ty to frit­ter away the op­por­tu­ni­ty cre­at­ed by ac­com­plish­ments in the world of sport.

This com­ing East­er week­end, Team TTO track and field, and Team TTO swim team will be con­test­ing for medals at their re­spec­tive Carif­ta events with home sup­port back­ing them.

Go out and sup­port the young­sters.