Led by flag­bear­er Giselle Hob­son, San Juan Jabloteh picked up its first ti­tle of the Courts All Sec­tors Net­ball League, win­ning the march past com­pe­ti­tion on Sat­ur­day evening as the league made its re­turn to the East­ern Re­gion­al In­door Sports Are­na in Tacarigua for its 29th sea­son.

March­ing to the mu­sic from the Fire Ser­vices band, Jabloteh dressed in their spank­ing new uni­form im­pressed the judges to take first place with 283 points. Sec­ond was Po­lice Youth Club (PYC) with 279, third was Po­lice with 275 and fourth was De­fence Force with 226.

They were part of a pa­rade that saw nine oth­er clubs per­form in front of a full house that in­clud­ed Di­rec­tor of Sports in the Min­istry of Sports and Youth Af­fairs Patrice Charles, rep­re­sent­ing the Sports Min­is­ter Sham­fa Cud­joe, T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) pres­i­dent Bri­an Lewis and T&T Net­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTNA) pres­i­dent Pa­tri­cia Butch­er, who took the salute. They each ad­dressed the gath­er­ing along with Fazad Mo­hammed, Man­ag­er, Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Uni­com­er (T&T) Lim­it­ed Courts and Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Tu­na­puna Es­mond Forde, who all praised the league for its longevi­ty and suc­cess.

Lat­er on they were treat­ed to fierce com­pe­ti­tion in the open­ing day knock­out com­pe­ti­tion in three of four di­vi­sions, Pre­mier­ship, Cham­pi­onship and Al­ter­na­tive.

Spec­ta­tors were par­tic­u­lar­ly wowed In the Pre­mier­ship Di­vi­sion with a new fea­ture which saw the in­tro­duc­tion of men in the com­pe­ti­tion. Each team will be al­lowed a max­i­mum of two men's play­ers on court in any giv­en match.

Emerg­ing the win­ner was Fire, which de­feat­ed PYC in the fi­nal, 6-3 thanks to a flaw­less per­for­mance from for­mer na­tion­al shoot­er Si­mone Mor­gan con­nect­ing all of her four at­tempts.

Win­ning in the Cham­pi­onship di­vi­sion was TSTT, with a 7-2 win over Bermudez and tak­ing the ti­tle in the Al­ter­na­tive cat­e­go­ry was Bermudez af­ter a 5-1 vic­to­ry over MIC.

Twen­ty five (25) teams will par­tic­i­pate in the com­pe­ti­tions this sea­son, six in the Pre­mier­ship, five in the Cham­pi­onship , ten in the Al­ter­na­tive and four in the Retro.

Re­sults

Open­ing Day Knock­out Fi­nals

Pre­mier­ship Di­vi­sion

PYC 3 (Fab­rice Fish­er 2/3, Tahi­ra Hollingsworth 1/2) vs Fire 6 (Si­mone Mor­gan 4/4, Onel­la Jack 2/3, Daystar Swift 0/1).

Cham­pi­onship Di­vi­sion

TSTT 7 (Can­dice Gibbs 3/7, Kani­ka Paul Payne 4/6) vs Bermudez 2 (Make­da De­Fre­itas 1/2, In­dra An­der­son 1/2)

Al­ter­na­tive Di­vi­sion

MIC 1 (Ok­era Den­nie 0/0, Aaliyah Mod­este 1/3) vs Bermudez 5 (Shanequa Grif­fith 2/2, Cor­rene Tor­res 3/4).