​Spe­cial Olympics T&T (SOTT) has achieved a land­mark, cap­tur­ing sil­ver at the in­au­gur­al Spe­cial Olympics Caribbean 3x3 Uni­fied Bas­ket­ball Games held in Saint-Claude, Guade­loupe, from Thurs­day to Sun­day.

​In a thrilling Di­vi­sion 2 fi­nal this af­ter­noon, Team TTO demon­strat­ed ex­cep­tion­al skill and de­ter­mi­na­tion, nar­row­ly edged 15-14 by host na­tion Guade­loupe in a keen­ly con­test­ed cham­pi­onship match. This achieve­ment marks a his­toric mo­ment, as it was T&T's first rep­re­sen­ta­tive team com­pet­ing in the fast-paced 3x3 for­mat of uni­fied bas­ket­ball.

​The 3x3 uni­fied bas­ket­ball for­mat ex­em­pli­fies the trans­for­ma­tive pow­er of in­clu­sive sports, bring­ing to­geth­er Spe­cial Olympics ath­letes with in­tel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ties and uni­fied part­ners with­out in­tel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ties to train, com­pete, and ex­cel as one co­he­sive team. This half-court ver­sion of bas­ket­ball fea­tures three play­ers per side and em­pha­sis­es fast-paced ac­tion, team­work, and mu­tu­al re­spect.

​Team TTO's del­e­ga­tion com­prised head coach Ronald De Sil­va, ath­letes Samuel Bona­parte, Ken­ton Fran­cois, and Melis­sa Nanan, along­side Uni­fied Part­ners Jalila Best and Aadil Ali-John, with sup­port from as­sis­tant coach Al­li­son Young. They com­pet­ed against na­tions across the Caribbean re­gion, in­clud­ing An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Bar­ba­dos, Do­mini­ca, Ja­maica, St Kitts and Nevis, St Maarten, and Guade­loupe.

​Fer­di­nand Bib­by, Na­tion­al Di­rec­tor of SOTT, ex­pressed im­mense pride in the team's achieve­ment and re­in­forced the or­gan­i­sa­tion's com­mit­ment to ex­pand­ing uni­fied sports pro­gram­ming. "Uni­fied sports is the new thrust of SOTT, which start­ed its Uni­fied Cham­pi­on Schools project ear­li­er this year," Bib­by stat­ed. He em­pha­sised that uni­fied sports cre­ate mean­ing­ful in­clu­sion where each ath­lete plays a val­ued role, pro­mot­ing ac­cep­tance, re­spect, and so­cial in­te­gra­tion.

​Look­ing ahead, Bib­by an­nounced am­bi­tious plans for 2026, promis­ing that uni­fied sports will trans­form ac­cep­tance, re­spect, and in­clu­sion of per­sons with in­tel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ties in T&T and ad­vance sports de­vel­op­ment through­out the na­tion.

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