Tacky High win inaugural Tampa youth cricket tournament
Tacky High School are celebrating this week after their Under-19 cricket team topped the three-day Tampa Youth Twenty20 (T20) Cricket Championship in Tampa, Florida on the weekend.
The final against an academy team from the University of South Florida (USF) was ruined by rain. However, Tacky High were declared champions after winning all three league games to be the only unbeaten team. The St Mary-based school defeated the other Jamaican school, Excelsior High, as well as local teams Assassins and USF at the league stage.
In the final, Marlon Williams top-scored with a 48-ball 71 — including four sixes and two fours — to push Tacky High to 143 for seven wickets in 20 overs. He had support from Rajae Brown with 26 from 11 balls.
Hema Sai Ari was the leading bowler for USF Academy with two for 39 from four overs. USF were nine runs for one wicket in two overs with Tacky paceman Jevone Wynter capturing the lone wicket, when the rains came.
Williams was reportedly named most valuable player (MVP) of the tournament after hitting a century and half century.
Excelsior High School’s lost their first two games and forfeited the third following a disagreement with organisers. Excelsior Coach Kirkland Bailey confirmed the report in a telephone interview.
Both Jamaican teams returned home on Monday.
Sheldon Pryce, coach of Tacky High, hailed the Tampa tournament as “a great experience for the players”. According to the Tacky coach, his players were especially enthused by the “experience of playing under lights…they loved it”.
He was also pleased by the response from locals which he described as “very positive”.
Pryce is urging organisers to continue with the cricket festival next year and in years to come and to “do even better” by having more teams from Jamaica and elsewhere participating.
Visa issues had forced the withdrawal of May Day High from the tournament which was also pushed back by a week.
Organisers have said they are aiming to make the Tampa tournament an annual event providing “exposure and development” for young cricketers in the United States and its neighbours.
Cricket is among the fastest-growing sports in the United States, driven by the huge migrant population from India and wider Asia, as well as people from other cricket-playing regions, including the Caribbean.
