In the past you may have known many young ath­letes, ex­celling in their sport­ing dis­ci­pline, but have you ever known of a mul­ti-tal­ent­ed sports­man? Well, we in­tro­duce you to sports­man Dwight Pope. He ex­cels in two sport­ing dis­ci­plines and does so rather im­pres­sive­ly. Dwight Pope is the cap­tain of the Shi­va Boys' Hin­du Col­lege foot­ball and crick­et teams. Pope per­forms ex­cep­tion­al­ly well prob­a­bly be­cause he has had an in­ter­est in sport since a very ten­der age. While at his pri­ma­ry school, Siparia Boys' RC, he was able to trav­el to St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines to par­tic­i­pate in an in­vi­ta­tion­al tour­na­ment.

The mul­ti-tal­ent­ed sports­man draws his in­spi­ra­tion from his fam­i­ly mem­bers who sup­port him through all his sport­ing en­deav­ours. His broth­er and fa­ther pro­vide him with the moral sup­port and en­cour­age­ment he needs al­so fi­nan­cial­ly en­sur­ing that he has all the gears he needs to play both sports. When asked which of the two sports he prefers, the bowl­ing all-rounder ad­mit­ted that while crick­et is the more chal­leng­ing one, he will choose crick­et any day with­out tak­ing a minute to con­sid­er. Most peo­ple who have been able to view his per­for­mances in both sports even say "though Pope loves foot­ball, his pas­sion lies on the crick­et pitch."

Pope's sport­ing icon is for­mer West In­dies cap­tain and cur­rent open­ing bats­man Christo­pher Gayle and co­in­ci­den­tal­ly, he has a marked re­sem­blance to Gayle. He ad­mires Gayle's ag­gres­sive and at­tack­ing na­ture with the bat and his abil­i­ty to be so calm when field­ing and un­der pres­sure. When ques­tioned on his thoughts on the cur­rent state of West In­dies crick­et, Pope said he be­lieves the prob­lems we are fac­ing lie main­ly on the team's de­pen­dence on cer­tain play­ers to per­form. He stat­ed, "The se­lec­tion process needs to be re­vis­it­ed and al­tered to en­sure that the best play­ers are cho­sen to rep­re­sent the re­gion." The last stop­per then stat­ed that he al­so ad­mires Zi­na­dine Zi­dane for his skills.

He is num­ber 19 on the school's team and this was in­spired by na­tion­al foot­baller Keon Daniel who al­so wears the num­ber 19. Pope ad­mit­ted that for the 2010 In­ter­col sea­son his best game against Pleas­antville in the knock out stages as it was a de­fend­er's game. He dis­closed that he has ad­mired his team-mate Ja­mal John dur­ing this sea­son, for his demon­stra­tion of class and skill. What is his ad­vice to young ones who are hop­ing to ex­cel in the sport­ing fra­ter­ni­ty? Pope in­sist­ed, "Stay away from drugs, push your aca­d­e­mics and set goals from ear­ly."

Best of luck to you in your fu­ture en­deav­ours Pope. Con­tin­ue to work hard and make us proud!

Stephan Seenath

Se­nior Press Pass Cor­re­spon­dent

Shi­va Boys' Hin­du Col­lege, Pe­nal