​The East­ern Re­gion­al In­door Sports Are­na and the Mal­oney In­door Sports Are­na were alive with en­er­gy on the week­end, as sec­ondary schools from across T&T bat­tled for top ho­n­ours at the T&T Schools’ Bas­ket­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTS­BA) an­nu­al 3x3 Tour­na­ment.

​East Mu­cu­rapo Sec­ondary set the tone in the Open Girls’ di­vi­sion, se­cur­ing the gold medal with a strong 9-4 vic­to­ry over St Joseph’s Con­vent, Port-of-Spain. St An­tho­ny’s Col­lege claimed third place af­ter de­feat­ing Holy Name Con­vent 4-2, while East Mu­cu­rapo’s Ranes­sa Ser­rette emerged as the di­vi­sion’s top scor­er.

​In the Un­der-15 Boys di­vi­sion, St Mary’s Col­lege de­liv­ered a stand­out per­for­mance, de­feat­ing Ari­ma North Sec­ondary 14-9 in the fi­nal. Af­ter beat­ing Queen’s Roy­al Col­lege (QRC) in the semi­fi­nals, St Mary’s held their mo­men­tum to lift the cat­e­go­ry tro­phy. QRC lat­er earned third place by over­com­ing Hillview Col­lege 12-8. The top scor­er of the U-15 group was Ari­ma North’s Lance Crouch.

​Fa­ti­ma Col­lege con­tin­ued its dom­i­nance in youth bas­ket­ball with vic­to­ries in both the U-17 and U-20 cat­e­gories. The U-17 fi­nal saw Fa­ti­ma edge QRC 21-19 in an ex­cit­ing, high-tem­po con­test, af­ter ear­li­er de­feat­ing Hillview Col­lege in the semi­fi­nals. Ari­ma North claimed the bronze with a 14-10 vic­to­ry over Hillview, while Hillview’s Joshua Fontinelle led the age group in scor­ing.

​The U-20 fi­nal was an­oth­er close af­fair, with Fa­ti­ma nar­row­ly de­feat­ing UWI Sixth Form 12-11 to se­cure the ti­tle. St Bene­dict’s Col­lege took third place af­ter a 12-3 win over East Mu­cu­rapo. UWI Sixth Form stand­out Jerve Ed­wards Car­ra­ci­o­lo fin­ished as the top scor­er of the U-20 di­vi­sion.

​This year’s tour­na­ment marked one of the largest and most com­pet­i­tive yet, am­pli­fied by the de­but of the U-15 di­vi­sion, which of­fered younger ath­letes a na­tion­al plat­form for the first time.

​Un­der the theme “El­e­vate the Game, Ig­nite the Na­tion”, the tour­na­ment high­light­ed the rapid growth and ris­ing ex­cite­ment sur­round­ing 3x3 bas­ket­ball across the coun­try. With in­creased par­tic­i­pa­tion from schools in every di­vi­sion, the event demon­strat­ed the ex­pand­ing reach of the sport and its im­pact on youth de­vel­op­ment.

​Or­gan­is­ers praised the en­thu­si­asm shown by stu­dents, coach­es, and sup­port­ers, not­ing that the TTS­BA re­mains com­mit­ted to strength­en­ing the path­way for young bas­ket­ball tal­ent and con­tin­u­ing to el­e­vate the stan­dard of the game in T&T.