Ken­ton Fran­cois, Samuel Bona­parte, and Melis­sa Nanan, along­side Uni­fied Part­ners Jalila Best and Aadil Ali John, are in Guade­loupe to rep­re­sent T&T at the Spe­cial Olympics Caribbean 3x3 Uni­fied Bas­ket­ball Games. The com­pe­ti­tion opened No­vem­ber 13 in Sainte Glaude, Bas­seterre, Guade­loupe, and will run un­til No­vem­ber 16.

​The del­e­ga­tion, a blend of tal­ent and spir­it, is be­ing guid­ed by the ex­pe­ri­enced coach­ing of Ronald De Sil­va and Al­li­son Young.

​​This year’s games will fea­ture teams from across the re­gion, in­clud­ing An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Bar­ba­dos, Do­mini­ca, Ja­maica, St Kitts and Nevis, St Maarten, and host na­tion Guade­loupe. The com­pe­ti­tion will show­case the fast-paced 3x3 bas­ket­ball for­mat, a half-court ver­sion of the sport with three play­ers per side, com­pris­ing two Spe­cial Olympics ath­letes and one Uni­fied Part­ner.

​Uni­fied Sports is a cor­ner­stone of the Spe­cial Olympics move­ment, pro­mot­ing so­cial in­clu­sion by unit­ing ath­letes with and with­out in­tel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ties on the same team. Through shared train­ing and com­pe­ti­tion, it fos­ters un­der­stand­ing, re­spect, and friend­ship both on and off the court.

​​David Ben­jamin, chair­man of SOTT, ex­pressed his ex­cite­ment, say­ing, ​“SOTT is set to cre­ate an­oth­er his­toric step in the de­vel­op­ment of bas­ket­ball in the re­gion with the par­tic­i­pa­tion in the SO Guade­loupe Re­gion­al 3v3 bas­ket­ball com­pe­ti­tion.

“This com­pe­ti­tion is the Caribbean’s re­sponse to fos­ter­ing in­creased com­pe­ti­tion op­por­tu­ni­ties, es­pe­cial­ly in team sports. Sin­gle-sport in­vi­ta­tion­al com­pe­ti­tions are cer­tain­ly the way to go. These com­pe­ti­tions give our ath­letes the op­por­tu­ni­ty to chal­lenge them­selves in the Caribbean space be­fore get­ting to World Games, pro­vid­ing ex­po­sure and ex­pe­ri­ence that is very much ap­pre­ci­at­ed.”

​The team held their fi­nal train­ing ses­sion on Wednes­day be­fore de­part­ing.