Fa­ti­ma Col­lege and East Mu­cu­rapo made a suc­cess­ful start to the T&T Sec­ondary Schools Bas­ket­ball League, win­ning the boys’ and girls’ Un­der-17 ti­tles.

Some 40 schools are reg­is­tered to com­pete in this year’s Sec­ondary Schools Bas­ket­ball League. How­ev­er, on­ly 15 of them par­tic­i­pat­ed at the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny on Thurs­day at the Mal­oney In­door Sports Are­na.

Pres­i­dent of the T&T Sec­ondary Schools Bas­ket­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTS­BA), Al­li­son Bas­t­ian, spoke on the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s mis­sion for this sea­son.

“Through this event and this en­tire 2025 sea­son, TTS­BA would like to con­vey, rise above, play be­yond, rise above your chal­lenges, play be­yond your ex­pec­ta­tions in all as­pects of life,” she said.

Fol­low­ing the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny, the tra­di­tion­al U-17 boys and girls’ Knock­out cham­pi­onships tipped off with Fa­ti­ma win­ning their first sil­ver­ware of the 2025 sea­son, de­feat­ing Holy Cross, 21-11 in the fi­nal. Trin­i­ty Col­lege East fin­ished third.

In the girls’ di­vi­sion, East Mu­cu­rapo came out tri­umphant against Fyz­abad, 15-2 in the fi­nal. Holy Name Con­vent Port-of-Spain de­feat­ed St Joseph’s Con­vent (POS) 8-6 to place third.

Kern George, the ath­let­ic di­rec­tor for New Chap­ter Bas­ket­ball Acad­e­my, who is as­sist­ing the league shared on the im­por­tance of com­pet­ing at the Sec­ondary School lev­el.

“For me, the biggest thing is friend­ship, long-last­ing friend­ships that I would’ve got­ten over the years. These ath­letes don’t even know who they are play­ing against right now, they are go­ing to be play­ing with in some years to come, whether it be on the na­tion­al team or whether it be in clubs. There are al­so op­por­tu­ni­ties for get­ting schol­ar­ships and an ed­u­ca­tion, I would’ve got­ten my two bach­e­lor’s de­grees and a mas­ter’s just be­cause of bas­ket­ball,” he said.

There was al­so a skills chal­lenge where stu­dent-ath­letes got the op­por­tu­ni­ty to show­case their tal­ent from an in­di­vid­ual per­spec­tive. The win­ner for the boys’ di­vi­sion was William Fran­cis of Fa­ti­ma Col­lege and for the girls, it was East Mu­cu­rapo Sec­ondary’s Ranes­sa Ser­rette.