New mas band Yu­ma may not have copped this year's cov­et­ed Band of the Year ti­tle, but the group emerged over­all cham­pi­on of the June 12 Vic­to­ry Games, held at the Po­lice Bar­racks and Train­ing Col­lege in St James. Yu­ma com­pet­ed on be­half of the John Hayes Memo­r­i­al Kid­ney Foun­da­tion, win­ning $25,000 for the or­gan­i­sa­tion. Over­all run­ners-up were Sorop­tomists In­ter­na­tion­al of New­town Trinidad and BP, led by for­mer Miss Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­verse Danielle Jones, re­spec­tive­ly. Or­gan­is­ers of the an­nu­al fund-rais­ing event were blessed with pic­ture per­fect weath­er, at­tract­ing not on­ly 12 teams, but a huge turnout of spec­ta­tors.

Spokesman of the event Sun­day, Ja­son Bap­tiste ex­pressed de­light with the man­ner in which the day's pro­gramme ran smooth­ly, though ex­press­ing con­cern about the re­duc­tion of cor­po­rate spon­sor­ship and sup­port in com­par­i­son to the pre­vi­ous four years. With mu­sic pro­vid­ed by pop­u­lar disc jock­ey Joy Juice, the dozen teams were first judged by TV6 tele­vi­sion news­cast­er Saman­tha John, young politi­cian Lau­relle Lee Sing and T&T Guardian Fea­tures Ed­i­tor Pe­ter Ray Blood in two cat­e­gories. The theme for this year's games was Hol­ly­wood and teams were re­quired to por­tray pop­u­lar movies, like Avatar, Die Hard, Young Guns, Ter­mi­na­tor, Ghost­busters and The Li­on King.

LPTS, por­tray­ing Die Hard, won the Best Team Pre­sen­ta­tion cat­e­go­ry, their clinch­er be­ing, hav­ing an ac­tor ac­tu­al­ly por­tray­ing a func­tion­ing stat­ue. In the Best Tent Pre­sen­ta­tion, Yu­ma, por­tray­ing The Li­on King, was an easy win­ner. Fol­low­ing the two open­ing seg­ments, the 12 teams sub­se­quent­ly com­pet­ed against each oth­er in a pro­gramme of nov­el­ty games, or­gan­ised by Is­land Games.

Teams and Char­i­ties

LPTS - Earth Strong

Tribe - An­i­mal Alive

Mc Cann - Girl Guides As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go

EMERGE - Autis­tic So­ci­ety

YU­MA - John Hayes Memo­r­i­al Kid­ney Foun­da­tion

Provoca­tive Fit­ness - Cyril Ross Home

I Palance - Just Be­cause Foun­da­tion

Scorch - Fam­i­lies in Ac­tion

SLAM Ra­dio - Tall­man Foun­da­tion

Sorop­tomists In­ter­na­tion­al of New­town Trinidad - Sorop­tomists In­ter­na­tion­al of New­town Trinidad

Drag­on Boat - Drag­on Boat

BP - Rain­bow Res­cue

Spon­sors

bmo­bile

NL­CB

Hol­i­day Snacks

Blue Wa­ters

Carib

Lu­cozade

Fla­vorite

John­ny Q

An­gos­tu­ra

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