Ty Humphrey pro­duced a stand­out per­for­mance for Trinidad and To­ba­go as Team TTO de­liv­ered a strong show­ing at the Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and Caribbean (CAC) Youth Chess Fes­ti­val, held in Puer­to Ri­co from De­cem­ber 15-20.

Humphrey cap­tured the gold medal in the Un­der-10 Ab­solute cat­e­go­ry af­ter com­plet­ing the nine-round tour­na­ment un­beat­en. He con­ced­ed just one draw, com­ing against Ja­maica’s Ra­jvir Shergil, and emerged as the top per­former among a com­pet­i­tive re­gion­al field. The vic­to­ry con­tin­ues his im­pres­sive in­ter­na­tion­al rise, fol­low­ing his sil­ver medal fin­ish in the U-8 Ab­solute cat­e­go­ry at the same fes­ti­val in El Sal­vador in 2024.

The CAC Youth Chess Fes­ti­val at­tract­ed some 200 play­ers from 22 na­tion­al fed­er­a­tions, mak­ing Humphrey’s achieve­ment a sig­nif­i­cant high­light for T&T’s youth pro­gramme.

Team TTO field­ed a 19-mem­ber del­e­ga­tion, com­pet­ing across the U-8, U-10, U-12, U-14, U-16 and U-18 age groups in both Ab­solute and Fe­male di­vi­sions. T&T was rep­re­sent­ed in all cat­e­gories ex­cept U-12 Fe­male.

Sev­er­al oth­er lo­cal play­ers al­so de­liv­ered no­table re­sults. Cather­ine Ali fin­ished fourth on tie-break in the U-10 Fe­male cat­e­go­ry af­ter scor­ing six points from four wins, four draws and one loss. In the U-16 Ab­solute di­vi­sion, Can­di­date Mas­ter Kael Samuel Bis­nath placed sev­enth with 5.5 points, while Jay­don Bowyer earned eighth place in the U-10 Ab­solute cat­e­go­ry, al­so with 5.5 points.

Team TTO con­tin­ued to fea­ture promi­nent­ly dur­ing the Blitz Chess Cham­pi­onship on De­cem­ber 19. Ilyas Ho­sein se­cured third place in the U-8 Ab­solute di­vi­sion, Nao­mi Clement placed fourth in the U-8 Fe­male cat­e­go­ry, and Cather­ine Ali added an­oth­er fourth-place fin­ish in the U-10 Fe­male sec­tion. Humphrey fin­ished fourth in the U-10 Ab­solute blitz event, while Caleb Har­ry claimed fifth in the same di­vi­sion.

The T&T del­e­ga­tion in­clud­ed Jor­dyn Clement and Nao­mi Clement in U-8 Fe­male; Ilyas Ho­sein in U-8 Ab­solute; Caleb Har­ry in U-10 Ab­solute; Yuri Ho­sein in U-12 Ab­solute; Dere­on Bram­ble in U-14 Ab­solute; Sand­hya Ram­sa­roop in U-14 Fe­male; Raquel Laing in U-16 Fe­male; Omari Bernard, Tris­tan Bal­li­ram and Tay­den Bal­li­ram in U-16 Ab­solute; Arad­hana Ram­nar­ine-Singh in U-18 Fe­male; and Joshua Med­i­na and Luke Bal­li­ram in U-18 Ab­solute.

On the tech­ni­cal side, Team TTO was sup­port­ed by FIDE Mas­ter Joshua John­son and Can­di­date Mas­ter Dev Soon­dars­ingh, whose prepa­ra­tion and guid­ance were in­stru­men­tal through­out the tour­na­ment. Tisha Bal­li­ram, As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary, served as the of­fi­cial del­e­gate for Team TTO.

T&T Chess As­so­ci­a­tion (TTCA) pres­i­dent Sandy Razark served as an of­fi­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tive from FIDE Amer­i­ca and was a mem­ber of the fes­ti­val’s or­gan­is­ing com­mit­tee. TTCA third vice-pres­i­dent Sadiqah Razark, re­cent­ly el­e­vat­ed as T&T’s on­ly fe­male In­ter­na­tion­al Ar­biter, al­so served on the ar­biter team in Puer­to Ri­co.

TTCA praised the per­for­mances of the play­ers and the sup­port of coach­es and par­ents, not­ing that the re­sults re­flect steady progress with­in the coun­try’s youth de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme and pro­vide a strong plat­form for fu­ture re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tions.

The as­so­ci­a­tion al­so shared its ap­pre­ci­a­tion to C3 Cen­tre for spon­sor­ing the jer­seys for the del­e­ga­tion.