Em­manuel Cour­nand and Zachary Julien were the top awardees at the Spar­tans TT fourth an­nu­al Black Af­fair event

The sports club ded­i­cat­ed to nur­tur­ing young tal­ent and pro­mot­ing holis­tic de­vel­op­ment, cel­e­brat­ed its 11th year of ex­is­tence in grand style on Sun­day, (De­cem­ber 17) at the Cen­te­nary Hall, St Mary's Col­lege, at­tend­ed by en­thu­si­as­tic play­ers, proud par­ents, and dis­tin­guished guests.

The bas­ket­ball duo were among the out­stand­ing ath­letes recog­nised at the awards cer­e­mo­ny.

Cour­nand re­ceived the pres­ti­gious Vince Bo­lastig Lead­er­ship Award and Julien, cap­tain of the U-14 team, was ho­n­oured with the Ju­nior Lead­er­ship Award. This award is grant­ed to a mem­ber who not on­ly per­forms on the court but more im­por­tant­ly off the court. The at­trib­ut­es that are con­sid­ered are their com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills, their con­fi­dence, their lead­er­ship qual­i­ties, their work eth­ic, their sports­man­ship, their dis­ci­pline and their team­work.

Fea­tured speak­er Bri­an Court­ney Lewis, im­me­di­ate past pres­i­dent T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee pres­i­dent and Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tions of Na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tees gen­er­al sec­re­tary de­liv­ered a pow­er­ful mes­sage, urg­ing young play­ers to ap­pre­ci­ate life's sim­pler joys, em­pha­siz­ing the cru­cial role of parental fig­ures.

He said, "So­ci­ety to­day is lack­ing parental fig­ures, and the sit­u­a­tions we see es­ca­lat­ing on the streets have sig­nif­i­cant ties to the lack of parental guid­ance at homes."

In his wel­come re­marks, Spar­tans TT pres­i­dent, Garvin War­wick, ex­pressed grat­i­tude to spon­sors, par­tic­u­lar­ly Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd (RBL), the main spon­sor of Spar­tans TT. Ani­ta King, man­ag­er, Group En­ter­prise Risk Man­age­ment, rep­re­sent­ed RBL at the event.

War­wick praised RBL's com­mit­ment since 2012 and high­light­ed their re­cent col­lab­o­ra­tion through the "Pow­er to Make a Dif­fer­ence" (PMAD) pro­gramme, align­ing with Spar­tans TT's ob­jec­tives.

War­wick out­lined key achieve­ments for 2023, in­clud­ing host­ing the first-ever girls' draft league in the Caribbean re­gion, suc­cess­ful char­i­ty dri­ves ben­e­fit­ing 22 fam­i­lies in the Ravine Rd and en­vi­rons, and the aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ments of stu­dent-ath­letes.

No­table men­tions were Stephanie Stephen and Julis­sa Danglade, who earned bas­ket­ball schol­ar­ships, and the U-14 boys team win­ning ti­tles at the Glo­ry 23 and Ma­yaro Ma­nia tour­na­ments.

Ac­knowl­edg­ing Spar­tans TT's com­mit­ment to com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice, War­wick praised par­ents and se­nior play­ers for con­tribut­ing to a clean­er T&T through a com­mend­able ini­tia­tive at the Cau­ra Riv­er.

King of RBL com­mend­ed Spar­tans TT for their ef­forts in build­ing bet­ter in­di­vid­u­als, say­ing, "The club's con­tri­bu­tions to shap­ing the char­ac­ter of our youth are in­valu­able."

Oth­er MVP awardees recog­nised on the night were Niko­lai Ince-Williams (U-10), Ky­mani Bartholomew (U-12), Njeah Sam (U-14), Zachary Julien (U-16), William Fran­cis (U-18), Talyi­ah Taitt (U-18 Fe­male), Ama­ree Toney (U-20), and Jahiem Fur­longe (Se­nior Men).

Spar­tans TT plans to con­tin­ue fos­ter­ing a new gen­er­a­tion of skilled ath­letes and re­spon­si­ble in­di­vid­u­als, as it looks for­ward to fur­ther growth and suc­cess.