AEK Athens of Greece mid­field­er Levi Gar­cia and West Texas A&M Uni­ver­si­ty’s Asha James was named as the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (T&TFA) men’s and women’s na­tion­al team “Play­ers of the Year” awards win­ners.

The fi­nal plac­ings were de­ter­mined by a com­bi­na­tion of on­line vot­ing for the me­dia and the fans and se­lec­tions made by na­tion­al team head coach­es and mem­bers of the T&TFA Tech­ni­cal De­part­ment.

The short­list was orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed fol­low­ing con­sul­ta­tion be­tween mem­bers of the T&TFA Tech­ni­cal De­part­ment led by tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor An­ton Corneal and the re­spec­tive head coach­es of the var­i­ous na­tion­al teams that were ac­tive in 2022.

The 25-year-old Gar­cia scored six goals in 12 match­es for T&T dur­ing their in­volve­ment in the King’s Cup host­ed by Thai­land, Con­ca­caf Na­tions League, and Con­ca­caf World Cup Qual­i­fy­ing for the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed 2022 Qatar World Cup, while he al­so fired in sev­en goals for AEK Athens in 25 match­es in the Greece Su­per League.

Gar­cia beat out Cana­di­an-based for­ward Ryan Telfer of Unit­ed Soc­cer League Cham­pi­onship club Mi­a­mi FC, and de­fend­er Aubrey David of Ecuador’s So­ciedad De­porti­va Au­cas, who won the 2021 T&TFA Se­nior Men’s Play­er of the Year award, for the top 2022 ho­n­our.

The 23-year-old James who re­cent­ly signed with Por­tuguese team Val­adares Ga­ia FC net­ted three goals for the Women So­ca War­riors dur­ing their Con­ca­caf Women’s World Cup Qual­i­fiers and al­so had a stand­out sea­son at her uni­ver­si­ty be­ing named the Lone Star Con­fer­ence (LSC) Pre­sea­son Of­fen­sive Play­er of the Year, First Team All-LSC, LSC Mid­field­er of the Year, Di­vi­sion II Con­fer­ence Com­mis­sion­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (CCA) First Team All-Re­gion, Unit­ed Soc­cer Coach­es First Team All-Re­gion, D2CCA Sec­ond Team All-Amer­i­can, and LSC Of­fen­sive Play­er of the Week (2x) awardee.

Over­all, she ap­peared and start­ed in 22 games and played the full 90 min­utes in 17 of those match-ups for West Texas A&M scor­ing 11 goals, two of which were game-win­ners, with sev­en as­sists.

The two oth­er play­ers to round off the top three women were Liana Hinds of Scot­land’s Hi­bern­ian, and Chel­si Jadoo, of Por­tuguese team Val­adares Ga­ia FC, as the nom­i­nees.

Na­tion­al Un­der-20 men’s cap­tain Mo­lik Khan was vot­ed as the “Male Youth Play­er of the Year” ahead of Nathaniel James, and Re­al Gill, while West Texas A&M Uni­ver­si­ty’s Maria-Frances Ser­rant cap­tured the “Fe­male Youth Play­er of the Year” ac­co­lade beat­ing Sarah De Gannes, and Mar­ley Walk­er to the ho­n­our.

The top Beach Soc­cer Women’s play­er was Alex­cia Ali, who was vot­ed Most Valu­able Play­er and Gold­en Boot awardee at the Ba­hamas Beach Soc­cer Cup held last No­vem­ber, where T&T women cap­tured the ti­tle ahead of Tene­sha Palmer, and Tsai Ann Fer­nan­dez while on the men’s side, Jesse Bai­ley was vot­ed as the win­ner ahead beat­ing Jor­dan Ri­ley and Do­minic Mc Dougall.

And on the Fut­sal front, Che Ben­ny, the Caribbean Games “MVP” came out on top of the vot­ing ahead of Eli­jah Shade and Kalev Kiel.