Hope and Pray Football Club defeated Jump Street in a dramatic penalty shoot-out to emerge victorious in the Social Development Commission (SDC) and Sandals Montego Bay region sponsored Retirement Community Football League recently.

The event was part of Sandals and SDC’s “Spread the Love” initiative launched earlier this year within the Montego Bay region, aimed at fostering greater harmony with communities in the parish of St James, particularly inner-city communities.

For their prize, Hope and Pray received the coveted Sandals trophy along with other incentives, while Jump Street also walked away with a trophy donated by the sponsors.

In a drama-filled encounter, the large crowd comprising members of the Retirement community and its neighbouring environs were on the edge of their seats when the finals was plunged into a sudden-death round following a full-time deadlock. Hope and Pray, however, held their nerves and emerged victorious much to the joy of their vocal supporters.

Sandals’ Regional Public Relations Manager Ian Spencer was effusive in his praise for the well-run competition. “Sandals is proud to support events of this nature and we look forward to cementing our partnership with the SDC in the future to assist the youths in communities such as Retirement through positive intervention programmes, both sporting and social,” Spencer noted.

“For the past few months, our ‘Spread the Love’ campaign with the SDC has taken us into communities including Barnett Street, Barnett Lane, Railway Lane, Canterbury, White House, Norwood and Flanker and we are excited at the prospect of touching more lives,” Spencer further observed.

SDC community officer for the Retirement area, Alecia Spence, spoke highly of the football league and partnership with Sandals, “Today was quite eventful and makes what we do within the SDC worthwhile. We are grateful to have continued sponsors like Sandals whose partnership has helped to strengthen the communities we are involved with.”

“We are delighted that Sandals could come on board and continue our recent partnership,” Spence noted. “For the past few months we have been working with Sandals in the Montego Bay region on a number of intervention programmes in inner-city communities, and so branching out into sports seemed the logical next step.”

According to Spence, as the primary government agency responsible for community development, the SDC is committed to partnering with critical stakeholders to improve social cohesion, camaraderie and improve social recreation in communities and that philosophy aligns perfectly with that of Sandals’ outreach efforts.

The SDC community officer said that as a response to dwindling social capital in many communities, as a result of COVID-19, crime and other factors, the SDC St James office had embarked on hosting a series of fun-filled gender inclusive activities to stimulate, organise and invigorate community spirit in the parish. The targeted objectives are: to build community spirit, camaraderie, and social recreation and to increase the number of community persons involved in organised sports, among others in order to foster greater community unity, engagement and involvement.

President of the Retirement Community Development Committee Benevolent Society Elma Thompson was beaming at the presentation ceremony which followed the championship game.

“This was an exciting event and the youths were enthused. I am looking forward to more of these events from companies like SDC and Sandals as they are a great way to encourage community participation and fellowship,” she told the gathering.