RACHAEL THOMP­SON-KING

rachael.king@guardian.co.tt

So­journ­er Hyles-Lewis be­longs to a promi­nent list of sports­women pro­duced in T&T.

While most ath­letes dream of mak­ing it to the na­tion­al lev­el in their sport of choice, Suzie as she fond­ly called, did it in three - net­ball, bas­ket­ball and rug­by.

"First­ly, I al­ways set goals and one of them was to see how far I could reach play­ing dif­fer­ent sports and al­ways rep­re­sent T&T," said Suzie.

Yes, so ver­sa­tile was the mul­ti-tal­ent­ed for­mer na­tion­al ath­lete. Maybe, red, white and black are just her favourite colours but she had an­oth­er un­ortho­dox rea­son for set­ting such high goals.

"My moth­er and fa­ther could not af­ford to pay for a va­ca­tion to see the world so I chose sport - train­ing hard, get­ting fit - so the world can see me," said the jovial but tough Laven­tille-born net­baller, bas­ket­baller and rug­by play­er. She is al­so a ca­pa­ble steel­pan play­er, play­ing with Carib Tokyo and San Juan All Stars Sun Val­ley.

The Cor­po­ral in the De­fence Force is for­tu­nate to live out her dream of trav­el­ling, vis­it­ing sev­er­al coun­tries in­clud­ing Bar­ba­dos, Ja­maica, St Lu­cia St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Puer­to Ri­co, Cu­ba, Cay­man Is­lands, Guyana in her out­ings with the three na­tion­al teams.

In the ear­ly part of her ca­reer, Suzie was a two-sport ath­lete with her choice of sports be­ing net­ball and bas­ket­ball and con­tin­ued that theme in­to her se­nior ca­reer as well. That was un­til she dis­cov­ered her fas­ci­na­tion for rug­by, sev­er­al years lat­er.

She start­ed play­ing net­ball at the age of nine while at­tend­ing the Laven­tille Girls' Gov­ern­ment School (1987-1995), con­tin­ued at Barataria Ju­nior Sec­ondary (1995-1998) where two years ago she was in­duct­ed in­to the school's Hall of Fame, then on­to South East Port-of-Spain Sec­ondary (1998-2000) and to this day still com­pete in the sport at age 42.

So it wasn't a sur­prise when she said: "My favourite sport is net­ball."

The burly ath­lete was a top-class de­fend­er, play­ing wing-de­fence, goal-de­fence and goal-keep­er and she showed great speed for T&T on the youth na­tion­al teams, Un­der-19 and U-21, be­fore tak­ing her tal­ents to the se­nior team where she ex­celled at the re­spec­tive Caribbean Net­ball As­so­ci­a­tions Cham­pi­onships over the years un­til her fi­nal ap­pear­ance at the World Net­ball Cham­pi­onships (lat­er re­named the Net­ball World Cup) in Ja­maica in 2003.

Al­so, as a teenag­er, she was al­so a mem­ber of the na­tion­al U-19 team that com­pet­ed in the Caribbean Bas­ket­ball Cham­pi­onships held in Ja­maica in 1997 where T&T just missed out on a medal, plac­ing fourth be­hind Ba­hamas, Ja­maica and Bar­ba­dos, re­spec­tive­ly.

Three years lat­er, she fea­tured for the se­nior team and helped T&T to a bronze in the Caribbean Bas­ket­ball Cham­pi­onships be­hind, Ja­maica and host Bar­ba­dos.

She achieved suc­cess in both sports in the ju­nior and se­nior lev­els and at age 34 that's when she moved on to rug­by where she re­alised, she was nat­ur­al.

"My pride was to al­ways have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to beat Ja­maica in a sport or game. They al­ways beat us in net­ball and bas­ket­ball but with my size and ball-hand­ing skills, I chose to go ahead and try rug­by which to my sur­prise, I was re­al­ly good," said Suzie, who un­like oth­er ath­letes up­on re­tir­ing from sports, ce­ment­ed her spot on the na­tion­al rug­by team from 2012-2016.

"I went on to train with Carib and then De­fence Force and then I was se­lect­ed for the na­tion­al team, right away. The coach Kit­ty An­drews fell in love with my size, my abil­i­ty to run and most of all, knock­down play­ers.

"She was amaz­ing, even my­self was amaz­ing at how I could knock down play­ers and it was nor­mal, I loved it. Net­ball you can­not con­tact, bas­ket­ball it's con­sid­ered a foul but in rug­by was nice­ness, with a smile!" chuck­led Suzie.

Though her play­ing days for T&T is over, she is still is a key com­po­nent on the na­tion­al scene as she is a qual­i­fied phys­io­ther­a­pist and fit­ness train­er. The for­mer in­struc­tor at the Civil­ian Con­ser­va­tion Corps, who did a Phys­i­cal Ed­u­ca­tion Course at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) in 2005, boost­ed her com­put­er knowl­edge at the Laven­tille Tech in 2006 and a First Aid Course at St John's Am­bu­lance (2006-2007), is cur­rent­ly train­ing na­tion­al net­ball U-19 squad and is the train­er and physio for the U-16 net­ball team.

Her port­fo­lio al­so in­cludes her work as a train­er/physio for sev­er­al bas­ket­ball teams in­clud­ing Un­der-19 women's unit (2014), De­tour Shak At­tack, Rap­tors, Roy­al Ex­tra Li­ons and Courts Hori­zon as well as

The moth­er of two was the train­er for the North Zone net­ball team and coach/train­er of both the T&T Youth Camp and St Fran­cois Girls' net­ball teams as well as the Par­a­lympic bas­ket­ball team.

Most of her coach­ing and train­ing has ceased when the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic struck the world ear­li­er this year but Suzie is still find­ing ways to share her sport­ing knowl­edge.

"Well for the club team (Met­al In­dus­tries Com­pa­ny- MIC Tigers) I train, I try to do lit­tle ball skills with my lit­tle play­ers, two of them (her daugh­ter and niece) live with me so I still use the time to show them skills."

Her ul­ti­mate dream though is to coach at the na­tion­al lev­el and she is do­ing all that is nec­es­sary to ful­fil this goal.