​The small, re­mote com­mu­ni­ty of San­ta Cruz came to the fore­front Sat­ur­day when Promise House T&T held its in­au­gur­al 5K road race to raise aware­ness for its work pre­serv­ing lives and pro­vid­ing care for the el­der­ly and the ill in T&T.

​Ta­fari Wal­dron, the mid­dle-dis­tance run­ning won­der­boy of the twin-is­land Re­pub­lic, stamped his trade­mark on the event by clinch­ing the vic­to­ry.

Ny­la Kerr broke the rib­bon at the fin­ish line as the first fe­male run­ner to cross, se­cur­ing the gold medal and ti­tle. Clear­ly wind­ed de­spite the cool con­di­tions, Kerr’s de­ter­mi­na­tion to suc­ceed cul­mi­nat­ed in a thank­ful prayer to her Almighty Fa­ther.

Some 1,000 run­ners came out for the event, a turnout that has be­come cus­tom­ary for lo­cal 5K races. But while all eyes were fo­cused on Wal­dron, a re­cent win­ner of the Colonel’s 5K, the diminu­tive run­ner was fo­cused on just fin­ish­ing. He told Guardian Me­dia Sports that he had par­tic­i­pat­ed in a 1,500-me­tre event mere hours pri­or.

​Still, he held off Stephon Gould for the top spot, with Dar­ius Hard­ing se­cur­ing third place. Wal­dron stopped the clock at 15 min­utes and 37.8 sec­onds, while Gould and Hard­ing com­plet­ed the top three in 15:45.4 and 16:03.1, re­spec­tive­ly. Christo­pher Rad­hay (18:45.1) se­cured fourth, while the duo of Alexan­der Far­num (18:53.2) and Seth Hadeed (20:06.5) round­ed out the top six.

​Wal­dron said he didn’t want to dis­ap­point, giv­en the high ex­pec­ta­tions.

​“When I looked at the start list, I was ranked num­ber one, so ob­vi­ous­ly it was ex­pect­ed for me to come out and win. I wasn’t too fo­cused on time; I was fo­cused on just com­ing out and win­ning, so I was able to win,” he said. “I’m sat­is­fied with my per­for­mance. I wasn’t re­al­ly aim­ing for a spe­cif­ic time to­day or any­thing. The con­di­tions are nice to­day, no hot sun. It was a lit­tle hu­mid, but it was still good. My plan to­day was to win; that was my plan go­ing in­to the race, so I just ex­e­cut­ed how I was sup­posed to, to be able to win,” Wal­dron ex­plained.

​Kerr, though, was sim­ply grate­ful. Flanked by her moth­er as she strug­gled to catch her breath af­ter the race, the 15-year-old said, “Yes, I was ex­pect­ing to win the race, so I did every­thing that I want­ed to do in this race to win. I’m just grate­ful that I ran it with­out any twist­ed an­kles due to the rain and with the Lord by my side. I did so, and I was able to pull off a vic­to­ry.”

Kerr crossed the fin­ish line with lift­ed hands in 19:46.9, fol­lowed close­ly by April Fran­cis in 20:25.3, and Lara Lit­tlepage in third with 23:48.8. The top six fe­male fin­ish­ers were com­plet­ed when the trio of Olivia Bayne, Is­abelle Plim­mer, and Alexx Dow­den crossed the line, post­ing times of 25:45.5, 29:07.1, and 29:22.6, re­spec­tive­ly.

The suc­cess­ful event came cour­tesy of the ded­i­cat­ed Promise House TT team based in San­ta Cruz, who work silent­ly be­hind the scenes to pre­serve life. Cherise Stauble, the Sec­re­tary of the Board of Promise House TT, shared with the me­dia ex­act­ly what her or­gan­i­sa­tion stands for.

​“Promise House TT is a non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion. We run three fa­cil­i­ties up in San­ta Cruz on the same prop­er­ty. One is a home for the aged, one is a hos­pice for adult can­cer pa­tients, and the oth­er is a ‘home away from home’ for pe­di­atric pa­tients who have can­cer or oth­er non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases. We are on the 5K train. We know there’s been a huge trend to­wards this kind of thing and that peo­ple seem to re­al­ly en­joy them and come out in their num­bers.

​“As you see here to­day, we’re beau­ti­ful­ly at­tend­ed. This is our in­au­gur­al 5K. We thought it was a great op­por­tu­ni­ty to just gen­er­ate some in­ter­est, gen­er­ate some aware­ness about our or­gan­i­sa­tion, and, of course, act as a fundrais­er. Or­gan­i­sa­tions like ours are al­ways look­ing for fund­ing, and we’re hop­ing this can be a year­ly event on our cal­en­dar so that we can con­tin­ue to pro­mote the cause and the fundrais­ing,” Stauble ex­plained.

​The race took run­ners from the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain, op­po­site TGI Fri­days, around the Sa­van­nah, and back to the start­ing point for the fin­ish. With some 1,000 run­ners cou­pled with a large fan base, Promise House TT achieved the aware­ness it had hoped for.

Stauble said, “One of the things that’s al­ready hap­pened is that with our so­cial me­dia ex­cite­ment and all the hype we’ve gen­er­at­ed, is that we’ve got­ten a lot more fol­low­ers, a lot more aware­ness, a lot more peo­ple. A lot more peo­ple are in­ter­est­ed in what we’re do­ing and what we’re all about.

“That’s our num­ber one goal, which is that we have a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing na­tion­al­ly about what we of­fer so that peo­ple can take ad­van­tage of our ser­vices, both the Home Away From Home and the hos­pice are free ser­vices, so that peo­ple who use those ser­vices don’t pay for what they re­ceive there, which is pri­mar­i­ly hous­ing, nurs­ing care, that sort of thing. The Home For The Aged, we re­al­ly sort of charge sus­tain­able costs so that it’s not too much of a drain on fam­i­lies’ re­sources.”