Three of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s teenage bas­ket­ballers have se­cured full schol­ar­ships at CODE (Chas­ing Our Dreams Every­day) Acad­e­my in Cana­da.

The trio of Ju­n­isha Harp­er, Tiara An­toine, and Abrielle Bas­combe de­part­ed Pi­ar­co on Wednes­day to take the next step in their bas­ket­ball jour­ney af­ter they earned full schol­ar­ships af­ter par­tic­i­pat­ing in a South Zone Bas­ket­ball Com­mis­sion of the Na­tion­al Bas­ket­ball Fed­er­a­tion of T&T camp in Sep­tem­ber.

The play­ers who were spot­ted by Trindad and To­ba­go’s born coach David “DJ” Joseph dur­ing a camp host­ed by the South Zone on Au­gust 16, 2024, at the South­ern In­door Sports Are­na in Ple­as­santville, San Fer­nan­do.

Clint Wil­son, the chair­man of the South Zone, ac­com­pa­nied the play­ers to the acad­e­my in Cana­da to en­sure that they set­tled in and were com­fort­able.

In ref­er­enc­ing the play­ers achieve­ments, the pres­i­dent of the NBFTT, Lt Col Ja­son Hills (re­tired), wished the play­ers all suc­cess in their new chap­ter of their promis­ing sport­ing ca­reers.

He said, “We wish these young women and Chair­man Wil­son a safe jour­ney and every suc­cess in their en­deav­ours. We are in­cred­i­bly proud of this his­toric mo­ment and are con­fi­dent that this is just the be­gin­ning of many more schol­ar­ships to come for bas­ket­ball play­ers across Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

The South Zone Bas­ket­ball Com­mis­sion (SZBC), which is led by Chair­man Clint Wil­son, has long cham­pi­oned youth de­vel­op­ment, com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ment, and com­pet­i­tive op­por­tu­ni­ties in bas­ket­ball with­in the zone and part­ner­ships with oth­er zones. He said, “As these three young women em­bark on their jour­ney abroad to­day, we ex­tend our heart­felt con­grat­u­la­tions to them and their fam­i­lies, as well as to the SZBC lead­er­ship, whose ded­i­ca­tion has made this mo­ment pos­si­ble.”

“The achieve­ments of Ju­n­isha, Tiara, and Abrielle are a tes­ta­ment to SZBC’s com­mit­ment to nur­tur­ing tal­ent and pro­vid­ing life-chang­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties,” said Kern Jack­son, the vice chair­man of the South Zone. Jack­son added that as SZBC con­tin­ues to ad­vance its four-year strate­gic plan, NBFTT re­mains com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing such ini­tia­tives, which not on­ly el­e­vate our ath­letes but al­so strength­en Trinidad and To­ba­go’s pres­ence in the in­ter­na­tion­al bas­ket­ball com­mu­ni­ty.