It was a warm and live­ly crowd who wit­nessed the open­ing of the sec­ond edi­tion of the Hoop of Life Com­mu­ni­ty Bas­ket­ball League, at the Bayshore bas­ket­ball court in Mara­bel­la, on Sat­ur­day.

As was en­vi­sioned by the spec­ta­tors, Mara­bel­la ran away with the first game of the com­pe­ti­tion now worth $1.5 mil­lion, by beat­ing Pleas­antville 101-47. And, as was al­so ex­pect­ed, Mara­bel­la's Corey Pas­call, the play­er who scored the high­est points in the in­au­gur­al league (211) and the most points in any one match (66), again reached dou­ble-dig­its with 16 points. He, how­ev­er, was best­ed by new sign­ing in guard Jef­frey Har­ris and cen­tre Dami­an Caton, al­so from Mara­bel­la, with 23 and 20 points, re­spec­tive­ly. For Pleas­antville, Kurt White scored 15 points, while An­ton Noel end­ed on 12 points.

Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for San Fer­nan­do West, Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan ad­dressed spec­ta­tors and team mem­bers at the open­ing and ex­plained the val­ue of the league. Seep­er­sad-Bachan said she was im­pressed with the team which rep­re­sent­ed her con­stituen­cy, Mara­bel­la, in its run­ner-up fin­ish in the in­au­gur­al com­pe­ti­tion.

Al­so ad­dress­ing the play­ers was the act­ing Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Clifton De Coteau who ex­tend­ed his best re­gards to the play­ers. The Hoop of Life Com­mu­ni­ty Bas­ket­ball league is an ini­tia­tive of the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and is op­er­at­ed from the Of­fice of Law En­force­ment Pol­i­cy (OLEP) di­rect­ed by Kei­th Re­naud.

This year there was an in­crease in the re­quire­ment of Un­der-21 play­ers from three to four who must be in­clud­ed on the 12-mem­ber squad. This de­vel­op­ment came with the in­ter­est shown by young play­ers who fol­lowed last year's cov­er­age of the tour­na­ment.

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