By Dean “The Sportsman” Greenaway
Track and Field: Paris Olympics
Kyron McMaster’s second Olympic Games 400m finals berth after finishing fourth in Tokyo, capped off a series of firsts—Rikkoi Brathwaite’s 100m semifinal advancement and Adaejah Hodge’s 200m semifinal.
McMaster who had been dealing with injuries, ran a season’s best 47.79 seconds—only his second time under 48.00 this year and 14th overall—to finish fifth in the race won by the USA’s Rai Benjamin in 46.46. McMaster won his semifinal in 48.15 after automatically qualifying from his heat with 49.24 in third.
Brathwiate ran his 100m semi in 10.15 seconds to place eight after a 10.13 third place finish to automatically advance.
Hodge, 18, was eight in her 200m semifinal in 22.70 seconds—her second fastest time of the season—behind the 22.81 on home soil. She ran 22.94 in the repechage round after a 23.00 time did not qualify her to move on.
World U20
Adaejah Hodge sprinted to Word Athletics U20 Championships 200m gold in Lima, Peru, becoming the first BVI athlete to claim a global title at any level of a World Athletics Series competition. Her feat came after claiming 100m silver—a historic sprint first.
Hodge dominated the field and ran 22.74 seconds with a 0.0 meters per second wind reading for the 200m gold, after scampering 11.27 (0.0) for 100m silver. “It means the world to me, since this season was so challenging to end it on a good note knowing that God had a plan for me,” Hodge told Island Sun Sports.
Carifta Games
Tiondre “Dre” Frett fought his way to a Carifta Games U17 Boys 200m bronze medal, lowering his personal best to 22.18 seconds, missing silver by .02, becoming the 3rd U17 Boys medalist since 1990. Frett won his Heat in 22.21 seconds. Frett ran a personal best of 10.88 seconds in the 100m final and was sixth, after running 10.92 to advance. He’s the 2nd U17 Boys 100/200m finalist since 1976.
Collegiate
JUCO Champ
In route to becoming the 11th BVI athlete winning a National Jr. College Championships individual crown, Khybah Dawson broke the facility record when he cut the sand at a season’s best 7.73m (25’4¼”). He capped of his Indoor Championships by collecting the Western Field Athletes of the Year award, after being tied with 7.71m (25’3½”) for the best Jr. College mark heading into nationals.
Conference Double
South Florida sprinter Jaleel Croal ran personal bests of 6.65 seconds and 20.96 secs, to win an American Athletics Indoor Conference Championships 60 and 200m sprint double in Birmingham, Alabama, becoming the 7th BVI athlete to pull off the feat since Northern Arizona’s Tracy Bradshaw started the streak in 1993.
Twin titles
Northwestern State strongman Djimon Gumbs, used a Shot Put personal best to bag the territory’s 40th overall conference crown since Dean Greenaway won the first in 1979. Gumbs, the reigning outdoor Shot Put champion, unleased a 5th round 19.35m (63’6”) heave, to win his first Southland Conference indoor title and fourth overall. Outdoors, Djimon 3-peated as Conference champion with a heave of 18.94m (62’2”), and twin brother Diamante repeated as Discus Throw champ with an opening heave of 56.26m (184’7”).
Squash
Left hander Danny Henderson pulled out a five-set thriller over defending champion Jaydon Williams of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, while fellow leftie, Delilah Pease dethroned Gia Ghuran of Trinidad and Tobago and Jakob Noblett bested Guyana’s Ethan Bulkan, as all three won Caribbean Jr. Squash Championships gold at the Tortola Sports Club. It was the first time that the BVI had ever won three medals of any type in the championships. In December, Pease won the Canadian Jr. Championships U11 Girls Division.
Sailing
Laser Sailor Thad Lettsome returned the sport to the Olympic Games for the 1st time since 1996, when he competed in the Paris Olympic Games. He finished 2nd in one of his races.
Football: World Cup
Like two prized heavyweight fighters, the USVI and BVI Men’s Football teams, battled through halftime, 90+5 minutes of stoppage time, in V.I. Classic II, then two 15 minutes extra times, tied at 0-0. It came down to penalty kicks, where the BVI went up 3-1, then the USVI pulled it back to 3-2, before substituting Midfielder Azarni Callwood made it 4-2, ending the BVI’s 28-year World Cup Qualifying drought with its first victory and the first time ever advancing in its history, dating back to 1996.
Kiwomya Resigns
BVI Sr. men Football coach Chris Kiwomya who was hired on Oct 8, 2021, confirmed with Island Sun Sports, that he is ending his 3-year tenure with the BVI Football Association, after the team lost to the Cayman Islands 1-0, in St. Kitts-Nevis in the CONCACAF Nations League.
Kiwomya’s contract was to end in January 2025. He said the run they had in in 2023 when he led them to their first regional victory in 19 years, was because of having camps and he was coming to the BVI to work with the players, but that hasn’t been the case this year. “The FA stopped me coming over to coach the players, having camps for whatever reason. That was the most disappointing thing because the whole point of the job was to help develop the players, help develop the plan and you can see in 2023, when I was coming to the BVI, we were making progress,” he said. “The reason why I’ve left, is because the FA has stopped supporting me. This affected preparations for games and ultimately, that affected results, because I couldn’t prepare properly. I would have liked to stay and finish what I was doing.”
Volleyball
In its return to the Eastern Caribbean Sr. Volleyball Championships for the first time since 2019, the BVI’ men’s team wrapped up play in Antigua winless, going 0-4. Association President Stephen Payne in his assessment, said that since they have been out of the system in relation to competitive Volleyball outside their local league, he noticed that the other teams seem to have been playing at a higher level, although they had spots of brilliance.
“Overall, we need to be able to entertain competition at this level during our preparation for tournaments, that we can gauge more specifically our areas of weakness,” he said.
Softball
Power Outage pitchers Bernadino Rio and Jose Peña combined to strike out 11 Pirates batsmen while giving up just two hits during a 9-2 victory, as they completed a sweep of the Pirates who swept them in 2023.
Synergy whipped Pure Problems 13-3, for their fourth successive Women’s Softball championship.
Sheep Retires
After more than 45 years in Softball, veteran pitcher Neville “Sheep” Smith has called it quits and says his second retirement from the sport is final. “Let’s put it this way. I’ve shared so many licks, (that) I didn’t know what to expect when it came time to retire,” he said after the Pirates’ 9-2 loss. “I think I’ve had a good run—I really had a good run—I don’t have anything more to prove in Softball. I think I’ve done and proved all I could with Softball in the BVI. The most I can do right now is to give back and teach what I know. My journey was a good one.”
Cricket
T20 and T10
Cavaliers beat the RTW Falcons by 20 runs to win the BVI Cricket Association T20 tournament. The RTW Falcons went on to win the Peter Haycraft T10 Tournament, with an unbeaten run, by fending off Royal Knights with a thrilling 12-run victory, laying claim to a BVI Cricket Association tournament title for the first time in eight years.
