SAMA­KI FE­LI­CIAN

Sport Cor­re­spon­dent

Chad Mor­gan and Falo­mi Mar­cano were crowned the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT) Na­tion­al Aer­o­bathon over­all cham­pi­ons last Sat­ur­day at the East­ern Re­gion­al In­door Sports Are­na in Tacarigua.

Mor­gan, the de­fend­ing men’s cham­pi­on, re­tained his ti­tle with a time of one hour, eight min­utes and 18 sec­onds. Mar­cano, nar­row­ly edged him out on the clock with a time of 1:08.16 to take the top spot among the women.

The high-en­er­gy event, pow­ered by ti­tle spon­sor KFC, at­tract­ed some 100 par­tic­i­pants across mul­ti­ple cat­e­gories, with $15,000 in to­tal prizes and spon­sors’ ham­pers up for grabs.

In the Un­der-20 cat­e­go­ry, Mor­gan’s 10-year-old daugh­ter, Isoke Mor­gan, suc­cess­ful­ly de­fend­ed her ti­tle with a time of 53.21. Mean­while, sev­en-year-old Nathan Bar­ry stole the show on the boys’ side, win­ning his di­vi­sion in 26.41.

The men’s and women’s 20–50 age group ti­tles went to Josi­ah Daniel (54.22) and Alex­ia John (1:04.17), while Brent El­der (58.51) and Nicole Vale­nil­la (53.04) claimed the Over-50 prizes. The new­ly in­tro­duced Staff cat­e­go­ry was dom­i­nat­ed by An­dell Ed­wards, who clocked 1:00.45, and Patrice Wood­ley, who fin­ished in a blaz­ing 39.03. Among UTT stu­dents, Nathaniel De­vi­gnes came out on top in 53.32, fol­lowed close­ly by Charis McK­ie in 53.17.

From the start, the en­er­gy in­side the com­plex was elec­tric. With lo­cal in­struc­tors lead­ing the rou­tines, par­tic­i­pants pushed their lim­its in sync with the mu­sic and mo­ti­va­tion­al coach­ing. The pack slow­ly thinned as the phys­i­cal chal­lenge in­ten­si­fied, but the spir­it re­mained high through­out.

Me­dia per­son­al­i­ty Sari­ka Ma­habir of 103.1FM, the of­fi­cial me­dia part­ner, kept the crowd en­gaged while spon­sors like Nestlé – Good & Nat­ur­al, Guilt­less Yo­gurt, and Cen­tral Ath­let­ic Gym of­fered sam­ple give­aways and in­ter­ac­tive booths. The T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) al­so used the plat­form to pro­mote its “Women in Sport” ini­tia­tive, pro­vid­ing smooth­ies and free mas­sages to par­tic­i­pants.

Af­ter seal­ing their re­spec­tive vic­to­ries, Mor­gan and Mar­cano ex­pressed their emo­tions to­wards the event.

“I en­joyed the ex­pe­ri­ence, the in­struc­tors were on point, the field was in­tense, I en­joyed it over­all,” Mor­gan said, while Mar­cano ex­plained, “I en­joy Aer­o­bics, I love to move, I be­lieve in move­ment, I be­lieve that keep­ing a fit body and mind is good for bal­ance. I must say when I first heard UTT, I took part in it last year and I said I am go­ing to try and win this year. It was a chal­lenge, but I just set­tled my­self and just moved.”

The 2025 Aer­o­bathon marked an­oth­er mile­stone in UTT’s com­mit­ment to fos­ter­ing well­ness, school spir­it, and com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ment through sport. With strong cor­po­rate sup­port and grow­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion each year, the event con­tin­ues to in­spire move­ment and uni­ty across gen­er­a­tions.