IN a country dominated by the team sports of cricket and football, it is worth remembering that netball is the first and only team sport to have given Trinidad and Tobago the title of world champions.
That pinnacle moment of excellence occurred at the 1979 Netball World Championships, which was hosted by Trinidad and Tobago and featured 19 teams from around the world.
T&T’s Calypso Girls had competed in the Netball World Championships, now known as the Netball World Cup, since its inaugural year in 1963. In their first four outings, they had to settle for fourth place three times, unchanged behind Australia, New Zealand and England although in 1967 South Africa managed to knock England out of the top three.
However, in 1979, the Calypso Girls were primed and ready to take on the two powerhouses of the sport, Australia and New Zealand. In front of a packed home crowd they hit the court with a talented and powerful nets lineup: Sherril Peters (captain), Ingrid Blackman, Angela Burke-Brown, Peggy Castanada, Heather Charleau, Cyrenia Charles, Marcia Dimsoy, Jennifer Nurse , Althea Thomas, Jennifer Williams, Eugenia “Jean” Theodosia Pierre and Veryl Prescod.
When the final whistle blew, the result of the 1979 Netball Championships was an almost impossible three-way tie between Trinidad and Tobago, Australia and New Zealand.
In the championship’s 56-year history, Trinidad and Tobago has been the only country other than Australia and New Zealand to win the title, such has been their hold on the championship cup.
How this exciting result was achieved is a remarkable story in itself. Each team won eight of their nine games, losing one game to one of the other two teams. New Zealand beat T&T 32-27; T&T beat Australia 40-38; and Australia beat New Zealand 38-36. Unable to determine an outright winner, the organizers announced all three winning teams of the championship.
For their victory, each member of the T&T team was awarded the Chaconia Medal (Gold). In addition to this award, Jean Pierre was honored for her outstanding performance and service to sport with T&T’s highest award, the Trinity Cross, known today as the Order of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. Later would come the Jean Pierre Sports Complex, named in her honor. From 1991-95 she served in parliament as MP for Port of Southern Spain and as Minister for Sports in the Patrick Manning cabinet.
In 2002 Fyzabad-born Jean Pierre passed away in the Cayman Islands, where she had been coaching.
For her service, the Netball Association was also awarded the Hummingbird Medal (Gold). The association and flourishing of netball in T&T during that period owed much to the vision and work of Lystra Lewis who had entered the sport as a player but quickly became a respected national netball coach and the standard bearer of Caribbean netball around the world. In England, she was the first West Indian to be appointed to the All-England Panel of Judges. With her training in physical education, Lewis returned home in 1961 to establish netball programs in primary and secondary schools and coach the first national team for the 1963 Netball Championships. She was also the recognized force behind construction of the first official netball court at the Princess Building in Port of Spain.
In those early years, when the popular team sports of soccer and cricket were not accessible to women nationally, netball provided a rare global platform for T&T’s talented female athletes. The Calypso girls took advantage of this opportunity and proved themselves to be world class athletes.
