Well, look at that! It’s be­com­ing less of a habit (much like run­ning the Sa­van­nah re­mains a myth­i­cal land for me), and more of a de­light­ful week­ly rit­u­al where Team T&T con­tin­ues to con­quer all com­ers; a rit­u­al that is stub­born­ly and thank­ful­ly re­fus­ing to break. It seems Team T&T are be­com­ing syn­ony­mous with ‘cham­pi­ons,’ and long may this sweet ad­dic­tion con­tin­ue!

I speak of none oth­er than the T&T Un­der-16 net­ball team. I have been watch­ing this team from the be­gin­ning of the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed Caribbean Net­ball As­so­ci­a­tion’s Jean Pierre Youth Cham­pi­onship, and from their open­ing game against Grena­da, to their clin­i­cal dis­man­tling of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, they were a team on a mis­sion, a net­balling jug­ger­naut in the mak­ing. I kept think­ing to my­self, these girls can win this tour­na­ment. And did they de­liv­er? You bet they did! Win­ning it in style and with a flour­ish!

This tri­umph isn’t just an­oth­er notch on the belt; it’s a mon­u­men­tal mo­ment in the his­to­ry of the T&T Net­ball As­so­ci­a­tion, as nev­er be­fore has a T&T team won the Caribbean Net­ball As­so­ci­a­tion’s Jean Pierre Youth Cham­pi­onship. To un­der­stand how much of a tri­umph this vic­to­ry is, sim­ply con­sid­er that this is the first time in the 21-year his­to­ry of the Jean Pierre Youth Cham­pi­onship, that a T&T team has seized the crown! And they did it on for­eign soil, in Bar­ba­dos! The fact that the tour­na­ment bears the name of T&T’s net­balling ti­tan, the leg­endary Jean Pierre, adds a lay­er of po­et­ic, sport­ing per­fec­tion.

Re­fer­ring to Jean Pierre takes me back to 1979 when the then Ca­lyp­so Girls (a name that oozes class) won the World Cham­pi­onships, shar­ing the ti­tle with the net­balling pow­er­hous­es of the world at the time, Aus­tralia and New Zealand. The 1979 World Cham­pi­onships took place right here at the West Re­gion­al Park Com­plex, as it was called then, lat­er to be fit­ting­ly re­named The Jean Pierre Sports Com­plex, af­ter Pierre’s hero­ics on the court. It was the fifth World Net­ball Cham­pi­onship, and it was in­deed his­toric and nev­er to be re­peat­ed, be­ing the first and last time three teams were de­clared cham­pi­ons.

All three teams won eight of the nine games played, with New Zealand de­feat­ing T&T 32-27, T&T de­feat­ing the mighty Aus­tralians 40-38, and Aus­tralia de­feat­ing New Zealand 38-36. As this had nev­er hap­pened be­fore, the tour­na­ment or­gan­is­ers were tru­ly caught frozen. As there was no way to de­ter­mine an out­right win­ner, all three coun­tries were de­clared cham­pi­ons. T&T’s vic­to­ry then was a seis­mic event, as the Ca­lyp­so Girls be­came the first team out­side of Aus­tralia and New Zealand to win the World Cham­pi­onship (the Aussies had won three ti­tles and the Ki­wis one in the pre­vi­ous four edi­tions of the World Cham­pi­onship).

Sad­ly, T&T’s net­ball for­tunes haven’t con­sis­tent­ly soared to those stratos­pher­ic heights since. That’s why this U-16 vic­to­ry feels like a breath of fresh air, a sign that the de­vel­op­ment pipeline is gush­ing with tal­ent. The de­vel­op­ment plan is al­ready in place, as these young stars will as­cend through the age groups (U-16 to U-18 and then to U-21), hope­ful­ly with the same hunger for suc­cess they’ve al­ready tast­ed. One would ex­pect they would want to con­tin­ue on the path to more and more suc­cess. The high­er they go, the tougher the com­pe­ti­tion will be, so they have to pre­pare for that, but I have faith their coach­es are in­still­ing a steely re­solve.

This win is a gold­en op­por­tu­ni­ty for the Net­ball As­so­ci­a­tion to reignite the na­tion’s pas­sion for the sport and to en­cour­age every­one who plays the game of net­ball in this coun­try to aim for the stars. The As­so­ci­a­tion must now go out there and seek more sup­port for net­ball. They need to charm the cor­po­rate world, re­mind­ing them of the glo­ry days of spon­sored clubs in the ‘70s and ‘80s when net­ball was thriv­ing. They have to, as they say, beat the iron while it is hot. These women have sud­den­ly re­vived the sport, giv­ing net­ball the shot in the arm it need­ed; now, let’s give them the sup­port they de­serve. Give the cor­po­rate world the his­to­ry of the sport and, to­geth­er with the tech­ni­cal staff who must have worked tire­less­ly to get the play­ers to this stan­dard, let this be the start of some­thing spe­cial for net­ball in T&T.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the same tri­umphant praise can­not be ap­plied to the T&T Red Force, as their quest for the Re­gion­al Four-Day Cham­pi­onship end­ed with a frus­trat­ing third-place fin­ish. The fi­nal game against the Guyana Harpy Ea­gles was billed as the de­cider, with the win­ner tak­ing home the metaphor­i­cal ba­con. But, a first-in­nings loss to the Ea­gles, cou­pled with a mon­u­men­tal come­back from Bar­ba­dos Pride to de­feat Lee­ward Is­land Hur­ri­canes, saw the Red Force pipped at the post, with the Pride fin­ish­ing sec­ond. The Ea­gles end­ed with 126 points, the Pride with 121, and the Red Force with 111. I can al­most hear the T&T Crick­et Board’s (TTCB) spin: “Well, they did well!” And you know what? They did, ex­ceed­ing my ini­tial­ly low ex­pec­ta­tions, as I did not ex­pect them to be in con­tention for the ti­tle.

Let me make it clear, I ap­plaud the T&T Red Force, who were ex­cel­lent through­out the sea­son. How­ev­er, I felt the ti­tle slipped through their fin­gers in that in­fa­mous game against the Ja­maica Scor­pi­ons. The two-week break be­fore­hand, filled with T20 white-ball frol­ics in­stead of red-ball rigour, was a self-in­flict­ed wound, as most, if not all the play­ers were play­ing in a T20 white ball fes­ti­val in­stead of play­ing in the league’s red-ball tour­na­ment. “Prac­tice is prac­tice,” they might say, but net prac­tice and match prac­tice are as dif­fer­ent as a fete and a church ser­vice.

So, the wait goes on for a first re­gion­al ti­tle for T&T Red Force in 20 years, hav­ing not won the ti­tle since 2006. While I ap­plaud the team and I’d give the play­ers a sol­id nine out of 10 for their ef­forts through­out the sea­son, the TTCB, with a gen­tle nudge, gets a gen­er­ous 3.5. I will con­tin­ue to be­rate the fact that un­til the lo­cal play­ers con­sis­tent­ly face the de­mands of four-day crick­et, they will un­doubt­ed­ly con­tin­ue to lament these near miss­es. The fact that nine play­ers have in­ter­na­tion­al or re­gion­al ex­pe­ri­ence is what kept the Red Force in the hunt. The re­al prob­lem sur­faces when those stars are un­avail­able for one rea­son or an­oth­er, and the re­place­ments are more ac­cus­tomed to the gen­tle pace of two-day club crick­et. The play­ers com­ing up are not used to the rigours of four-day crick­et be­cause they play two-day crick­et lo­cal­ly.

The oth­er prob­lem is that there are 10 teams in club crick­et in this coun­try, so ba­si­cal­ly, the TTCB is say­ing there are at least 130 play­ers in T&T who are good enough to make it to the next lev­el, but they are play­ing some three-day games and two-day games. Check the scores of all the top club teams lo­cal­ly; the games are es­sen­tial­ly one-in­ning games when the teams are even­ly matched. Un­til the com­pe­ti­tion re­verts to all 3/4 day games, the fringe play­ers will con­tin­ue to strug­gle.

The CWI (Crick­et West In­dies) does not help with all these bizarre and ridicu­lous two-week breaks mid-tour­na­ment. I won­der if in the Coun­ty Cir­cuit or the Sheffield Shield (or any oth­er se­ri­ous crick­et cham­pi­onship), there are two-week breaks af­ter a cou­ple of rounds? You don’t have to be a ge­nius to guess the an­swer. It’s like paus­ing a movie halfway through for a com­mer­cial break.

But let’s end on a pos­i­tive note, shall we? To all my dear read­ers, may your East­er be filled with joy, peace, and per­haps a cel­e­bra­to­ry (jump) shot or two in ho­n­our of T&T’s vic­to­ri­ous U-16 princess­es. Be safe in your cel­e­bra­tions, and re­mem­ber, even when one sport leaves us with a ‘what if,’ an­oth­er seems to soar to glo­ri­ous heights. Let’s go T&T!

Ed­i­tor’s note: The views ex­pressed in the pre­ced­ing ar­ti­cle are sole­ly those of the au­thor and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion in which he is a stake­hold­er.