De­spite the loss of the Caribbean Sports Tele­vi­sion Net­work – Sports­Max, this year’s Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League (SS­FL) promis­es to be one of the most ex­cit­ing sea­sons, with the start of the Girls Pre­mier­ship Di­vi­sion, which will be fund­ed by the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion, the Big Five Play-Off spon­sored by First Cit­i­zens, and Omega XL join­ing the fray as a new part­ner.

The girls’ pre­mier­ship will kick off to­mor­row with a clash be­tween St Joseph’s Con­vent (PoS), the SS­FL Co­ca-Co­la Girls’ na­tion­al In­ter-Col cham­pi­ons, and their fierce ri­val Pleas­antville Sec­ondary, last year’s South Zone Girls’ In­ter-Col win­ner, on Fri­day at 3:30 pm, the first match of a dou­ble head­er at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo.

That game will be fol­lowed by the 2024 boys’ Co­ca-Co­la na­tion­al In­ter­Col cham­pi­ons, St Bene­dict’s Col­lege, fac­ing the pre­mier­ship win­ner, Fa­ti­ma Col­lege, at 5:30 pm.

It will be a first time for the girls’ pre­mier­ship di­vi­sion, which will fea­ture the five zone win­ners from 2024, play­ing in a round robin for­mat that will com­prise two rounds. At a launch on Wednes­day at the Tech­ni­cal Cen­tre of the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um in Bal­main, Cou­va, SS­FL pres­i­dent Merere Gon­za­les sum­marised the league’s con­tri­bu­tion to the de­vel­op­ment of stu­dents at the na­tion’s schools over the years by stat­ing its de­ter­mi­na­tion to progress de­spite the chal­lenges faced since its in­cep­tion in 1961.

“The mere fact that we have sur­vived 61 years is an ex­cep­tion­al­ly valu­able and crit­i­cal­ly im­por­tant achieve­ment. It’s al­ways bet­ter for us to live in hope rather than die in de­spair. And in life, as we nav­i­gate through the tri­als and tribu­la­tions of this earth­ly jour­ney. We will en­counter some short­com­ings. And that’s im­por­tant be­cause from the short­com­ings, from the mishaps, from the hic­cups, we can grow,” Gon­za­les said.

Gon­za­les, fit­ting the role of the 12th pres­i­dent of the SS­FL, em­braced the cor­po­rate cit­i­zens as crit­i­cal to his league’s achieve­ment. Sports­Max closed its doors a cou­ple of months ago but has com­mit­ted to com­plet­ing its con­tract with the SS­FL through a part­ner­ship with Dig­i­tal Rush/TTT agree­ment to en­sure match­es are broad­cast.

Ac­cord­ing to the SS­FL leader, “There are some rather in­ter­est­ing sce­nar­ios that have un­fold­ed lead­ing up to this launch. What is very in­ter­est­ing, as we all would be aware, is that in 2016, from that time to now, Sports­max Dig­i­cel, who was our ma­jor ti­tle me­dia spon­sor, be­cause of their par­a­digm shift tak­en in their busi­ness mod­el, have ter­mi­nat­ed their in­volve­ment in the Caribbean, in­clud­ing T&T, as of the 8th of Au­gust 2025. In light of that, the SS­FL re­al­ly worked close­ly with Sports­max, which, by the way, I think, with ut­most re­spect to every oth­er me­dia house, re­al­ly has the most pro­fi­cient, most ef­fec­tive, and most pro­fes­sion­al pro­duc­tion and broad­cast­ing crew.”

“One of the ar­eas that we have been very con­cerned about is that of the so­cial me­dia plat­form. We are en­gag­ing youths, al­most 9,000 on the field at any giv­en time. We haven’t even added those who are in the school com­ing to sup­port their col­leagues. So we are im­pact­ing thou­sands and thou­sands of youths. And we all know that when we re­fer to the so­cial me­dia plat­form, we are talk­ing about Tik­Tok, In­sta­gram, Face­book, YouTube, etc.”

Gon­za­les not­ed fur­ther, “And we know ful­ly well that to com­mu­ni­cate and to en­gage, to in­ter­act with the youths, we have to be on the plat­form that they are on. So, with that be­ing said, we will be mov­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly and ex­pe­di­tious­ly with a spe­cif­ic group that will be held chiefly re­spon­si­ble, work­ing along with our web­site co­or­di­na­tor, Mr Ash­ford Malchan, to en­sure that our so­cial me­dia plat­form on the SS­FL pages is lit up dai­ly with all the in­for­ma­tion per­tain­ing to re­sults of games, goal scor­ers, quo­tients if and when nec­es­sary, the MVPs of the games, and even in­ter­views with play­ers and spec­ta­tors in and out of school. And to do that, we are very hap­py to have the In­ter­sec­tions Com­pa­ny, of which Mr En­rique Ru­pert is a part, led by Liu Chen, and the oth­er per­son is Mr Williams.”

Fol­low­ing to­mor­row’s dou­ble­head­er, ac­tion in the league will re­sume on Sat­ur­day with a round of six match­es at venues across the coun­try. Six­teen teams will make up the pre­mier­ship boys di­vi­sion, while five will com­prise the new girls’ pre­mier­ship. Ger­ald El­liot, in giv­ing a break­down of the league, said, “The for­mat of the pre­mier­ship di­vi­sion is con­test­ed by 16 teams op­er­at­ing on a sys­tem of pro­mo­tion and rel­e­ga­tion.

We have the boys’ cham­pi­onship, which is six teams per zone, ex­cept for To­ba­go. But this year there will be six, see­ing that they have two teams in the Pre­mier. Then we have the boys’ se­nior, boys’ un­der-16, boys’ un­der-14, and boys’ form one. We have the girls’ cham­pi­onship, and as you heard a while ago, we could be go­ing over to girls’ pre­mier, girls’ cham­pi­onship, girls’ se­niors, and girls’ un­der-15.”

“The league for­mat of the Pre­mier­ship con­sists of 16 teams, 13 from the pre­vi­ous sea­son and three pro­mot­ed from the Cham­pi­onship Di­vi­sion,” El­liot shared.