Rachael Thomp­son-King

Mu­cu­rapo Ex-Pupils gave the Port-of-Spain Net­ball League (Posnl) a fa­mil­iar start with them win­ning the march past com­pe­ti­tion on Sun­day at the Jean Pierre Com­plex in Mu­cu­rapo. Mu­cu­rapo caught the judges' eyes for its fifth ti­tle in six years, fin­ish­ing two points (257) ahead of sec­ond-place Fire, who scored 255. Po­lice (235) was a sur­prised third with Mal­ta Carib Sen­a­tors (211) and San Juan Jabloteh (210) clos­ing out the top five po­si­tions, re­spec­tive­ly. Some 13 clubs al­so in­clud­ing Hori­zon, Ebony, De­fence Force, Jesters, Harlem, Sparkles, CS Jets and Tran­scend took part on the tra­di­tion­al pa­rade in a mel­low start to this year's com­pe­ti­tion.

An ex­hi­bi­tion match fol­lowed soon af­ter be­tween the um­pires and a mixed In­ters (La­dy Er­na Re­ece) Di­vi­sion team which end­ed tied at 25, fol­low­ing soon af­ter. The 73rd edi­tion of the league had a de­layed start due to the T&T Net­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTNA) host­ing of the Amer­i­c­as Fed­er­a­tion of Net­ball As­so­ci­a­tions (AF­NA) ear­li­er this year. How­ev­er, Posnl pres­i­dent, Deb­bie-Ann Fran­cois, does not think the short­ened ver­sion of the league will af­fect the lev­el of com­pe­ti­tion. "De­spite the late start of the league, we ex­pect with the sup­port of every­one, that we will have a suc­cess­ful sea­son," said Fran­cois, who al­so thanked the small gath­er­ing for the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny de­spite the rain, which fell for much of the morn­ing and ear­ly af­ter­noon. Pres­i­dent of the T&TNA, Fran­cis­ca Rousseau, was al­so present for the event and com­pli­ment­ed the league for its con­tin­ued ex­is­tence.

"This is the old­est net­ball league in the coun­try and it cer­tain­ly must be recog­nised for hav­ing done so well over the years," said Rousseau, al­so call­ing on the play­ers to al­ways com­pete at their best. She went on to an­nounce that an in­ter­na­tion­al team will vis­it in No­vem­ber to com­pete against the na­tion­al Un­der-21 team which is cur­rent­ly in train­ing un­der coach­es Grace Parkin­son-Grif­fith and Veron­i­ca Mc­Don­ald. The ju­nior "Ca­lyp­so Girls" are prepar­ing for the World Youth Net­ball Cham­pi­onships which is card­ed for Scot­land, next year from Au­gust 22-31. Com­pe­ti­tion is set to be­gin on Thurs­day with teams in the In­ters Di­vi­sion in ac­tion from 5.15 pm. Teams will com­pete in four oth­er cat­e­gories in­clud­ing the An­gela "Pinkie" Dray­ton-Thomas (A1), Janet Bai­ley (A2), Bar­bara Bur­nette (B2) and Bar­bara Chan­dleur (B1).

Sched­ule

Thurs­day

In­ters Di­vi­sion

Court 1:

Harlem vs Mu­cu­rapo Ex

Hori­zon vs Tran­scend

Court 2:

Po­lice vs Ebony

Sat­ur­day

(Match­es start

at 3.15 pm)

A1 Di­vi­sion

Court 1:

Sen­a­tors vs Jabloteh

Hori­zon vs De­fence Force

A2 Di­vi­sion

Court 2:

Hori­zon vs Jesters

Po­lice vs Sen­a­tors