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CAYON, SADDLERS DOMINATE YOUTH FOOTBALL COMPETITIONS

Cayon Football Club made a clean sweep of Youth football competitions winning the Atiba Harris U15 and Keith Gumbs Youth Cup U17 competitions last week Sunday evening at the SKNFA Technical Center. Saddlers United won the SKNFA Premier Youth Cup (U13), the day before also at the Technical Center, defeating St. Paul’s United 1-0. Village Superstars were the finalists in both the U15 and U17 finals but succumbed to Cayon in both competitions. Cayon defeated Village Superstars 1-0 in the U15 finals, which started at 4 pm, while their U17 counterparts defeated Village 3-0.

This is the first major competition being played at the SKNFA Technical Center, which is now lighted and able to host nighttime competitions and training exercises. This was something SKNFA Technical Director Lenny Taylor pointed out during halftime of the U17 match. “It’s a wonderful occasion today. We’ve seen two young teams, very enthusiastic. In an environment where it’s wonderful; it’s the first game with the lights on and we are quite happy that we are able to expand the program a little bit further and play matches under the lights. For the last eight months, we have been dying to get this opportunity and it’s a wonderful opportunity for the young people,” Taylor said.

Mr. Taylor, prior to the start of the competition, pointed out the importance of the youth competitions to developing young footballers in St. Kitts and Nevis. “The purpose behind them is to try to get the players as early as we possibly can, to start to culture them with the modern football which is necessary for them to play on a high level. We also can see the total population of players within the different age categories so that we can discover players that we do not know about; identify them and bring them into the system of the national team development program,” he said. These competitions are a precursor to the various SKNFA Youth leagues, that will commence soon.