The top per­form­ers in the bpTT To­ba­go Zone of the Sec­ondary Schools Net­ball League were recog­nised in an award cer­e­mo­ny at the Vic­tor E Bruce Fi­nan­cial Com­plex, Scar­bor­ough, last week.The ac­co­lades were piled high for a resur­gent Scar­bor­ough Sec­ondary, which topped the zone in all age cat­e­gories ex­cept the un­der-15 di­vi­sion, on its way to be­com­ing na­tion­al cham­pi­ons in the un­der-13 and over-17 age cat­e­gories. Bish­op's High School emerged zon­al win­ners in the un­der-15 cat­e­go­ry.

Cur­rent na­tion­al play­er Aniecia Bap­tiste won a clutch of awards for in­di­vid­ual ex­cel­lence as part of the Scar­bor­ough team. "This school com­pe­ti­tion was in­stru­men­tal to my de­vel­op­ment as a play­er. Right now, I am fo­cused on im­prov­ing my skills in or­der to rep­re­sent our coun­try at the high­est lev­els. I al­so be­lieve that as a se­nior play­er in the To­ba­go Zone, it is my re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to help the oth­er play­ers around me re­alise their full po­ten­tial," the con­fi­dent low­er-six stu­dent ex­plained.Re­vived in 1991, the league, with over 300 play­ers, has been sup­port­ed by the Di­vi­sion of Ed­u­ca­tion, Youth Af­fairs and Sport (DEYAS) of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, with spon­sor­ship from en­er­gy com­pa­ny BP Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Giv­ing the fea­ture ad­dress at the awards cer­e­mo­ny was Jo­mo Pitt, As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary for Youth Af­fairs and Sport. "I want to start off by mak­ing a com­mit­ment to dou­ble the cash prizes for the teams who take part in the In­ter­col as­pect of the com­pe­ti­tion. I am very en­cour­aged by the high qual­i­ty dis­played and I want us to get to the point where the en­tire na­tion­al net­ball team can be field­ed by To­ba­go. The THA, bpTT and a num­ber of stake­hold­ers have in­vest­ed in de­vel­op­ing this league–we've cre­at­ed the op­por­tu­ni­ty and now it is up to you, the play­ers, to show how much you want to take it to the next lev­el, know­ing that we will sup­port you all the way to the top," Pitt said.

As part of its sup­port for the To­ba­go Zone, bpTT es­tab­lished a bur­sary award sys­tem to fur­ther the de­vel­op­ment of net­ballers who ex­cel in both aca­d­e­mics and ath­let­ics. The top achiev­ers this sea­son were Ja­malia Ed­wards (un­der-13) of Scar­bor­ough Sec­ondary School, Nateisha Radg­man (un­der-15) of Bish­op's High School, Jare­sia Mc Eachrane (un­der-17) of Sig­nal Hill Sec­ondary School and Aniecia Bap­tiste (over-17) of Scar­bor­ough Sec­ondary School.Bring­ing greet­ings on be­half of the spon­sors was Joel Primus, Com­mu­ni­ty Sus­tain­abil­i­ty and Stake­hold­er Re­la­tions Ad­vi­sor, bpTT.Al­so giv­ing com­men­da­tions at the cer­e­mo­ny were a num­ber of net­ball stake­hold­ers in­clud­ing Lynette Dun­can, Pub­lic Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer of the T&T Net­ball As­so­ci­a­tion and Lenore Melville, Pres­i­dent of the Pri­ma­ry Schools Net­ball League.Na­tion­al un­der-16 play­er and Bish­op's star Nateisha Radg­man was ho­n­oured for her all-round ex­cel­lence in­clud­ing hav­ing amassed an im­pres­sive tal­ly of 50 and 55 goals at the zon­al and na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tions, re­spec­tive­ly.