Team Saba won the 6 a side soccer championship or­ganized by the SSFF (St. Eustatius Sports Facilities Foundation) in collabora­tion with IBOS (Interna­tional Brothers of Statia soccer club.) The cham­pionship was held on Sat­urday at the Johan Cruyff soccer field in Statia. The Competition had 4 local participating teams along with teams from the neigh­boring islands of Nevis and Saba for a total of 6 teams..

Roche Refurm and Paul Fletcher of IBOS said “We, the IBOS Soccer club (In­ternational Brothers of Statia) along with SSFF (St. Eustatius Sports Fa­cilities Foundation) would like to extend our apprecia­tion and thanks to all par­ticipating teams, referees, audience, Red Cross St. Eustatius and Commis­sioner of Sports represen­tative Sjahairah Fleming for making our first soccer championship a success”.

At the opening ceremony games opened with Ro­che Refurm welcoming all the teams present to the IBOS Tournament and Prayer was offered for the safety of all players. The first game was played be­tween the Talibans and the SEFA (St Eustatius Football Association), the game ended in a tie with a score 5-5. Game 2 was played between Team Saba and the Queen City Ballers.

The Zeelandia Beach faced off against the Golden Rock team in Game 3. The Golden Rock Team won the game with a score of 3 – 2. The fourth game was between the Talibans team and Team Saba. Team Saba won the game with a score of 6 – 2. Game 5 saw the Queen City Ballers vs Gold­en Rock, where the Queen City won the game against the Golden Rock team 7- 2. The Zeelandia team then went up against the SEFA team and the Zeelandia team came away with the win with a score of 6 – 2 in the six game of the night.

The seventh game was played between the Tali-bans and the Queen City Ballers, the game ended in a tie score of 2-2. Zeelandia Beach faced off against Team Saba in game in the eighth game of the evening , Team Saba won the game 10- 1. Golden Rock and SEFA went up against each oth­er and the Golden Rock team won the game with a score of 6 – 0 in the ninth game of the night.

The championship game was played between Team Saba and Golden Rock, Team Saba won the game against Golden Rock team with a score of 7- 2. The highest goal scor­ers went to Alijan­dro Diaz with 10 goals.

Commissioner Richeline Leerdam could not be pres­ent for the event so her ex­ecutive assistant Sjahairah Fleming presented the tro­phies to the winners. The organisers said that tonight is the first of which every­one can look forward to many more of these events as this brings the differ­ent islands closer together.

The Daily Herald.