Rachael King

Say­ing good­bye is nev­er an easy thing but yes­ter­day morn­ing mem­bers of the net­ball fra­ter­ni­ty lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al as well as the sport­ing com­mu­ni­ty said farewell to net­ball and sport­ing ad­min­is­tra­tor Lystra Lewis. The net­ball icon was laid to rest at the Mu­cu­rapo ceme­tery fol­low­ing the fu­ner­al ser­vice at St Crispin's An­gli­can Church in Wood­brook of­fi­ci­at­ed by Rev Glo­ria Wal­dron with Canon Knol­ly Clarke giv­ing the homi­ly.

Lewis passed away at the Port-of-Span Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal on Sat­ur­day, af­ter ail­ing for some time. Ac­cord­ing to a close rel­a­tive of the 85-year-old Lewis, the vet­er­an of­fi­cial died af­ter suf­fer­ing from alzheimer's. The con­gre­ga­tion in­clud­ed for­mer Min­is­ter of Cul­ture and Gen­der Af­fairs Joan Yuille Williams, Fi­fa vice pres­i­dent Jack Warn­er, pres­i­dent of T&T Crick­et Board Deryck Mur­ray, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Don­na Cox, Mol­ly Rhone, pres­i­dent of World Net­ball gov­ern­ing body, In­ter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion of Net­ball As­so­ci­a­tions (IF­NA) and the Amer­i­c­as Fed­er­a­tion of Net­ball As­so­ci­a­tions (AF­NA).

Cap­tain of the 1979 World Net­ball Cham­pi­onship team Sh­eryl Pe­ters gave trib­ute to her for­mer coach along with Rhone, T&T Net­ball As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Pa­tri­cia Butch­er, Deb­bie Ann Fran­cois, pres­i­dent of the Port-of-Spain Nat­ball League and Iva Gloudon, the di­rec­tor of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Sport and Phys­i­cal Ed­u­ca­tion Cen­tre. Gloudon was not im­pressed with the treat­ment of the net­ball stal­wart in her fi­nal days though, cit­ing her dis­ap­point­ment in her ad­dress.

Al­so present were for­mer na­tion­al play­ers Enid Browne, Peg­gy Cas­tana­da, Ver­na Stew­art, Brid­get Adams to name a few, and mem­bers of the present na­tion­al se­nior team led by cap­tain Rhon­da John-Davis.

Say­ing good­bye al­so were a num­ber of lo­cal net­ball teams in­clud­ing in­ter­na­tion­al um­pire Ann Marie Dick­son of Hori­zon net­ball team.

The re­ces­sion­al hymn Mine eyes have seen the Glo­ry was well suit­ed if on­ly to de­scribe the glo­ri­ous con­tri­bu­tions Lewis made to sport in T&T and more specif­i­cal­ly net­ball.