SOUTH REWARD:--- St. Maarten Academy Student Government Association (SGA) walked away with the top honours on Friday after edging out their counterparts in the annual Interscholastic Board Games competition hosted by the United Student Government Front (USGF).
The event, held at Milton Peters College, saw outgoing president of Academy's SGA Learie Hall and fellow student Arion St. Clair making a clean sweep of dominoes, while other Academy scholar Leon Blake successfully went up against St. Dominic's Cade Bensaid and Katiana Pierre of St. Maarten Vocational Training School (SMVTS) in the game of checkers. Bensaid and Pierre were awarded second and third places, respectively.
However, Prayag Sadarangani, of St. Dominic's High, brought home the gold for his school after beating Academy's Jeffeny Fidel and Akyl Arrindell of SMVTS at chess. Fidel and Arrindell placed second and third, respectively.
Despite being the lone representative for Milton Peters College, Wesley St. Jago, with the help of Academy's Jenice Forbes, was able to cop third place at Dominoes. They bested St. Dominic's Latoya Fraser and Giovanni King, who lost the second place slot to Jelani Maduro and Jimmy Dozier of SMVTS.
In the end, St. Dominic High edged out SMVTS by one point to take second place overall. As a result, they had to surrender winner's trophy to St. Maarten Academy, after holding bragging rights for the past year.
Head of the Department of Sports within the Ministry of Education, Culture, Youth and Sports, Jonelle Richardson applauded the efforts of the USGF to host the event and congratulated all the winners.
"One of the things the Department is interested in is hosting interscholastic games and this is a great initiative. It is good that [the organizers] got the various schools involved...It is great to see this happening and the Student Governments coming together," said Ms. Richardson, who was on hand to present the prizes to the gamers.
Coordinator Sinatra Rouse said she is hopeful that the government can get involved in the annual games, which she has been organizing for the past six years, with the aim of sending the students abroad to compete.
USGF, which was established in 2007 as a method of bringing together the student bodies of the various high schools on the island, meets at least four times each academic year to, among other things, train representatives of the various student governments. At these sessions, students get a sense of what it takes to organize and conduct their meetings, as well as share ideas on how they can make their learning environment fun.
Friday afternoon's coaches included community chess trainer Ormond Jowett, SMVTS mentors Lindon Williams and Nordalee Hewitt, as well as Academy mentor Kim Lucas-Felix.
Rouse expressed great appreciation to the sponsors of the games, especially BIMACO, which has been donating drinks and snacks for the past five years, and this was given free of charge to all students attending the event. Domino's Pizza, too, has always given the second prizes and this year, all the participating schools pooled resources to ensure that all students at the games received a token.
