The Ravens Basketball Club paid tribute to its former teammate and comrade, Kevin Lawrence in winning fashion Saturday night after they toppled a strong Georgetown All-Star team during the Kevin Lawrence Memorial Extravaganza at the Cliff Anderson Sports Hall.
Ravens’ Division One team won the game 57-50 in front of their sizable fan base, which came out in numbers in remembrance of the late Lawrence and in support the inaugural event.
They also rooted for Georgetown’s number one basketball team.
Apart from the patrons and players, some of whom were observed wearing T-Shirts with pictures of Lawrence, the late player’s family was also at the event.
His father, Toby Lawrence, Mother, Norma Lawrence and brother, Richard Lawrence along with the Surinamese nurse that received Lawrence at the Suriname hospital following Lawrence’s eventually fatal accident were all at the event and greeted the teams prior to the feature game.
The sizable crowd also witnessed and were genuinely entertained by the evening’s opening game featuring some of the best youth basketball players that Guyana has to offer.
In game one of the evening’s double header, Ravens’ Division Three team went up against the Youth Basketball Guyana (YBG) programme’s Elite squad, which included current and former junior national players such as Akeem Kanhai, Shelroy Thomas and Linden Fraser, among others.
Ravens delivered a notable fight but lost to YBG Elite 69-53 in a game that kept the supporters into it and warmed them up for the feature clash that followed.
Some noteworthy performances in the opening game came from Thomas and Kanhai, who both played pivotal roles in their clash with Ravens’ juniors.
Thomas scored a game-high 20 points while Kanhai, with 19 points was at the forefront of a YBG run in the closing moments of the game that extended the YBG lead after Ravens broke a double digit deficit and were within three points of YBG in the final quarter.
Ravens’ Dellon Robertson led his team’s scoring with 19 points.
Meanwhile, in the feature game, which began as a low scoring encounter, pl
ayers that shined were Ravens’ Rodwell Fortune, who scored a game high 16 and his teammate Travis Foster with 10, while the All-Stars’ Travis Burnett led his team on the score sheet with 10 points.
Fans also got involved in activities at the event as they participated free-throw shooting challenges for the females and the males with the hope of scoring to win the monetary prizes up for grabs.
