Vin­ode Mam­chan

Hillview Col­lege bats­man Du­ane Cock­burn was vot­ed "Crick­eter of the Year" at the Pow­er­Gen Sec­ondary Schools prize giv­ing cer­e­mo­ny held yes­ter­day at the Queen's Park Oval. Cock­burn starred with the bat dur­ing the sea­son and was in­stru­men­tal in his team win­ning all the ma­jor Sec­ondary Schools ti­tles that were up for grabs. He beat out Jesse Bootan, Teon Web­ster, Scott Rag­bir and Em­manuel Lepp for the top award. There were al­so four fe­male crick­eters of the year and they were twins Al­ice and Al­i­son Collins, Joane Bruce and Leann Sama­roo. The team of the year award went to Hillview Col­lege for win­ning the league and in­ter­col ti­tles.

On hand to ad­dress the stu­dents was min­is­ter of Sport Anil Roberts and he spoke of nev­er giv­ing up. He told those present that they must be punc­tu­al at all times and nev­er give up once they iden­ti­fied their goals.

He praised the Sec­ondary Schools Crick­et League for de­vel­op­ing the game say­ing: "The num­ber of schools we have tak­ing part in the tour­na­ment is quite an in­crease over the num­bers that took part in my time. "This shows growth and de­vel­op­ment and for this I must say well done. Un­for­tu­nate­ly foot­ball has tak­en an­oth­er di­rec­tion and some­thing needs to be done to put it right." Al­so present was min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion, Dr Tim Gopeesingh and he re­called his ex­pe­ri­ences in grow­ing up and used it as a tool to show the youths that they could mix ed­u­ca­tion and sport. Gopeesingh, in ad­di­tion to be­ing a med­ical doc­tor al­so played First Class crick­et for Trinidad and To­ba­go as a fast bowler.

He al­so re­it­er­at­ed his po­si­tion that he and the min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion were to­tal­ly sup­port­ive of ex­tra-cur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties and he was go­ing to look at hav­ing all schools equipped with gyms. For­mer West In­dies crick­eter and pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Crick­et Board (TTCB) Deryck Mur­ray de­liv­ered the keynote ad­dress and called on the young play­ers to for­get all the old talk and get down to hard work. He said: "You could have what­ev­er de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme in place but the on­ly way you can ben­e­fit is if you can find the right bal­ance with your life. This is the on­ly time that suc­cess will be gained. "De­vel­op­ment means im­prove­ment and if you are at­tend­ing de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes then you on­ly gain suc­cess if you have im­proved. You all be­long to a well or­gan­ised league and I urge you to take the best of what is be­ing of­fered to you and run with it."

Pres­i­dent of the Sec­ondary Schools Crick­et League, William Wal­lace said there are plans to make the league even bet­ter in the next year and made a call to those in au­thor­i­ty to meet with all stake­hold­ers to have a na­tion­al sports pol­i­cy for stu­dent ath­letes. Pow­er­Gen has been spon­sor­ing the league for the past 15 years and based on the suc­cess so far, hu­man re­sources man­ag­er Janel Phillip gave the as­sur­ance that the com­pa­ny will be around for quite a while to as­sist.

"Over the course of our 15-year spon­sor­ship of Sec­ondary Schools crick­et, we have seen sig­nif­i­cant growth in the num­ber of par­tic­i­pat­ing schools," she said. "We have had the priv­i­lege to al­so wit­ness a quan­tum leap in the qual­i­ty of crick­et played. "In 1996 when Pow­er­Gen was look­ing for a mean­ing­ful ini­tia­tive which would di­rect­ly im­pact the lives of our na­tion's youth, we se­lect­ed the Sec­ondary Schools crick­et. Fast for­ward to 2011 and we could not be more pleased with that de­ci­sion."

POW­ER­GEN SEC­ONDARY SCHOOLS PRIZE GIV­ING

Crick­eters of the Year (Male): Jesse Bootan, Teon Web­ster, Du­ane Cock­burn, Em­man­u­al Lepp and Scott Rag­bir.

Crick­eter of the Year (Male): Dwayne Du­ane.

Crick­eters of the Year (Fe­male): Joane Bruce, Leann Sama­roo, Al­ice Collins and Al­i­son Collins.

Forbes Per­saud School of the Year award

Hillview Col­lege.

Spe­cial Ad­wards

Spon­sors award: Garth Cha­toor (Pow­er­Gen).

Na­tion­al and West In­dies team ser­vice

Bri­an Christ­mas, Stephen Kat­wa­roo, Derone Davis and Ke­iron Joseph.

Na­tion­al win­ners

Girls Open-Ari­ma North Sec­ondary School.

Boys Un­der-14-Fa­ti­ma Col­lege.

Boys Un­der-16-El Do­ra­do East Sec­ondary School.

Se­niors 20/20-St Bene­dicts Col­lege.

League Div II-Union Clax­ton Bay Sec­ondary School.

Di­vi­sion I-Hillview Col­lege.

Na­tion­al In­ter­col-Hillview Col­lege.