Clay­ton Clarke

The Rain­for­est house, clad in green, cap­tured the over­all ti­tle at the 2013 To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism In­sti­tute Sports and Fam­i­ly Day at the Ply­mouth recre­ation­al grounds on Sun­day.

Un­der bright sun­shine, with the cool Caribbean Sea breeze sweep­ing over the field, next door to the his­toric Fort James, the stu­dents had a day of fun and ex­cite­ment. The vis­it­ing Niger­ian ex­change stu­dents added to the fes­tiv­i­ties with their own flair by lead­ing the cheer­ing.

Rain­for­est dom­i­nat­ed the pro­ceed­ings, win­ning the bal­loon race, mu­si­cal steps, three-legged race, team hu­la-hoop, fam­i­ly and eat­ing races.

The bal­loon race pro­vid­ed many thrills as the par­tic­i­pants had to throw bal­loons filled with wa­ter to each oth­er to the end of a line and in­to a bas­ket.

The dif­fi­cult part was that, start­ing from the sec­ond per­son, par­tic­i­pants had to throw the bal­loons while fac­ing in the op­po­site di­rec­tion to the re­cip­i­ent. This re­sult­ed in some of the bal­loons hit­ting com­peti­tors and burst­ing, leav­ing many soaked.

The eat­ing race proved to be dif­fi­cult as dry bis­cuits, gra­nola and hot soft drink had to be con­sumed by the teams un­der the scruti­ny of the race of­fi­cials–The To­ba­go Sports Mar­shalls.

In the fam­i­ly race, the "fa­ther" had to run while lift­ing the "moth­er" then two "chil­dren" be­fore cross­ing the fin­ish line.

Tak­ing in the ac­tion were THTI board chair­man Dr Ver­leen Bobb-Lewis and di­rec­tor Car­ol-Ann Birch­wood James as well as Costaatt To­ba­go head Michael Sim­mons.

In the end Rain­for­est amassed 182 points to fin­ish ahead of Scar­let Ibis (174), Quel­by (122) and Hum­ming Bird (80).