Stephanie Seenath

"We are the cham­pi­ons of cham­pi­ons, not be­cause we do any­thing ex­tra­or­di­nary but be­cause we do the or­di­nary things bet­ter than any­one else." These were the words of the St. An­tho­ny's Col­lege cham­pi­onship foot­ball team's cap­tain, Dwight Ce­bal­lo, in an in­ter­view with gieMAGAZINE. The West­moor­ings Tigers sat down ex­clu­sive­ly with us for an in­ter­view af­ter their splen­did per­for­mance in the 2011 Sec­ondary School's Foot­ball League and the In­ter­col com­pe­ti­tions. St. An­tho­ny's Col­lege is one of the pre­mier sec­ondary aca­d­e­m­ic in­sti­tu­tions in the coun­try and of­fers to the stu­dent an op­por­tu­ni­ty for holis­tic de­vel­op­ment by hon­ing one's skills both phys­i­cal­ly and aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly mak­ing stu­dents the best that they can be. The suc­cess in the 2011 sea­son for St An­tho­ny's Col­lege came as a unit­ed ef­fort from the play­ers, the tech­ni­cal staff and teach­ing staff. Al­though bom­bard­ed with hard work from the teach­ing staff and coach­ing staff, the boys of the cham­pi­onship foot­ball team man­aged to pull through with suc­cess in both as­pects of their school­ing - sport and acad­e­mia. The team was first of all led by the en­er­getic and vo­cif­er­ous Dwight Ce­bal­lo who was able with his bub­bly per­son­al­i­ty to ral­ly the team and as­sist in get­ting the best re­sults. His par­tic­i­pa­tive and de­mo­c­ra­t­ic style of lead­er­ship was in­deed an as­set in their 2011 un­beat­en run.

Coach Nigel Groovs­ner is an­oth­er crit­i­cal as­pect of the Tigers' suc­cess in 2011. 'Groovsy' as he is af­fec­tion­ate­ly called, has been at St. An­tho­ny's for the past 28 years in the ca­pac­i­ty of a Phys­i­cal Ed­u­ca­tion teacher. He is al­so a Dean of Dis­ci­pline at the in­sti­tu­tion. He grad­u­at­ed with a de­gree from The West Vir­ginia Uni­ver­si­ty in Phys­i­cal Ed­u­ca­tion af­ter re­ceiv­ing a foot­ball schol­ar­ship. Coach Groovs­ner shares a spe­cial re­la­tion­ship with his play­ers. He said, "It's not just about foot­ball, it's about life. I am like a par­ent to them." It is through foot­ball that he teach­es these young men many of life's lessons. A will­ing and cor­po­ra­tive aca­d­e­m­ic staff is al­so at the side of the team to sup­port them. Prin­ci­pal Mau­rice In­niss is there to en­sure that along with sport­ing suc­cess, the boys al­so pay sim­i­lar at­ten­tion to acad­e­mia. Most of them are in form six prepar­ing to sit the Caribbean Ad­vanced Pro­fi­cien­cy Ex­am­i­na­tions. Teach­ers as­sist the foot­ball team by giv­ing ex­tra class­es and the boys al­so take the ini­tia­tive to take ex­tra lessons to beef up their aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance. As gieMAGAZINE was told "Prin­ci­pal In­niss urges his cham­pi­onship foot­ball team to be am­bas­sadors for the school and to set an ex­am­ple for those in the low­er forms. He makes them aware of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and em­pha­sis­es that there is no room for delin­quen­cy." St. An­tho­ny's can al­so boast of hav­ing a great hand­ful of play­ers on the na­tion­al team like cap­tain Dwight Ce­bal­lo, Keane Mc Ivor, Garvin Sama­roo, Ja­mal Fran­cois and Luke Her­nan­dez just to name a few. The West­moor­ings pow­er­house was able to cap­ture the Peo­ple's Choice Award at the Spir­it of Sports Awards host­ed re­cent­ly by the Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs. The gieMAGAZINE wish­es to con­grat­u­late the St. An­tho­ny's Col­lege Foot­ball Team for its suc­cess in the 2011 sea­son. We wish you all the best for the 2012 sea­son hop­ing it is as suc­cess­ful as last year.