Aaron An­toine of Spar­tans TT has been in­vit­ed to at­tend the Na­tion­al Bas­ket­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (NBA) Elite De­vel­op­ment team at the NBA Acad­e­my Latin Amer­i­ca in San Luis Po­to­si, Mex­i­co, for a train­ing camp from March 25-30.

The 17-year-old was rec­om­mend­ed by his coach­es and lo­cal ad­min­is­tra­tors, who put to­geth­er a play­er pro­file and videos of his bas­ket­ball, ath­let­ics, and aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ments and shared it with the NBA staff.

“This is a God-sent gift to al­low me to de­vel­op my un­der­stand­ing of the game fur­ther and al­low me to learn from some of the best coach­es in the game,” said the Spar­tans TT cen­tre.

An­toine, who at­tends Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do af­ter re­ceiv­ing six ones and a two at the CSEC ex­am­i­na­tions at Wa­ter­loo Sec­ondary, was praised by his coach Garvin War­wick.

“This is an ex­cel­lent op­por­tu­ni­ty that has pre­sent­ed it­self for Aaron. We hope he has a good show­ing and opens the doors for oth­ers like him to fol­low. We are con­tin­u­ous­ly cre­at­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties to put our kids in front of elite pro­grammes, col­lege and uni­ver­si­ty coach­es. That’s why we do what we do to al­low our kids to ben­e­fit from the ath­let­ic achieve­ments,” said War­wick, who is de­vel­op­ing a plat­form to cre­ate more dig­i­tal pro­files to show­case T&T and Caribbean ath­letes.

An­toine, a mem­ber of the na­tion­al Un­der-17 boys’ bas­ket­ball team, is a dual ath­lete. The six-foot-eleven-inch ath­lete is al­so a long jumper and high jumper at­tached to Neon Wolves Ath­let­ic club.

In Feb­ru­ary, Aaron emerged as the stand­out ath­lete at the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ics Ad­min­is­tra­tions of T&T (NAAATT) Prepa­ra­tion Meet se­ries two at the Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um in To­ba­go. He achieved the Carif­ta Games qual­i­fy­ing stan­dards in the both boys’ U-20 long jump and high jump events. He won the long jump with 7.15 me­tres and cleared the bar at 2.00m to top the high jump.

An­toine is one of two Neon Wolves ath­letes reg­is­tered to com­pete at the NAAATT's Carif­ta Tri­als at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo, Port-of-Spain start­ing to­mor­row and runs un­til Sun­day.

He will fea­ture in three events, the boys' U-20 long jump, high jump and the 100m, hop­ing to again meet the stan­dard for the Carif­ta Games set to take place in Kingston, Ja­maica, from April 16-18.