Profiles: Heroes, Role Models and Pioneers of Trinidad and Tobago - by Nasser Khan

149 KELVIN ‘PA’ ALEONG (1902-1980) F or decades from around 1940 to 1980, ‘Pa’, ‘Pappy’ to some, was a coach for generations of schoolboys and adults who played football and cricket. For years every afternoon, many mornings and most of Saturdays and Sundays, even on Christmas Day from 11 am to 2 pm, one would see ‘Pa Aleong’ instructing or observing the young cricketers or footballers at St. Mary’s College grounds or on the Queen’s Park Savannah. Many top players in these two sports of that era would say that they owe a lot of their success to the coaching skills of ‘Pa Aleong’. In 1971, he was awarded the Humming Bird Silver Medal and in 2004 was inducted into the First Citizens Sports Foundation Hall of Fame. STEPHEN AMES (1964- ) F rom San Fernando but now living in Canada, Stephen Ames is a professional golfer who grew up in Pointe-à-Pierre and learned to play at the Pointe-à-Pierre Golf Club. In his Hoerman Cup debut at the age of 16 in 1980, he broke the course record at Sandy Lane, Barbados with a six-under-par total of 66. He turned professional in 1987 and won his first professional tournament in the United States (the Pensacola Open) in 1991. From 1993 until 1997, he played on the European Tour. He captured his first Professional Golfers’ Association of America (PGA) Tour title in 2004 at the Cialis Western Open in Illinois, USA among a field that included many of the best professionals in the world including Tiger Woods and Vijay Singh. Later that year, he reached the top twenty in the Official World Golf Rankings. 1994 - Lyon Open (1st); 1996 - Benson & Hedges Open (1st); 2004 - Cialis Western Open, Cog Hill Golf and Country Club, Lemont, Illinois, USA (1st); 2005 - Ames started the Stephen Ames Cup (Canada versus T&T); 2006 - The Players Championship, Sawgrass, Florida, US (1st); 2007- Third PGA Tour victory at the Children’s Miracle Network