Trinidad student on football scholarship dies in US car accident

(Trinidad Guardian) A young stu­dent who won a foot­ball schol­ar­ship on­ly this year died yes­ter­day in a ve­hic­u­lar ac­ci­dent in the Unit­ed States.

The death of Reuel Tyson, 20, a for­mer stu­dent of St Bene­dicts Col­lege, La Ro­maine, has sent shock waves through­out the sec­ondary school foot­ball com­mu­ni­ty, his for­mer school fra­ter­ni­ty, fam­i­ly and friends.

De­tails of the ac­ci­dent have not been dis­closed. The col­lege post­ed up pho­tos of Tyson and his team-mates on Face­book, as it ex­pressed con­do­lences to his fam­i­ly and friends.

The Col­lege post­ed, “To­day, we say good­bye to an­oth­er tal­ent. Our past stu­dent, Reuel Tyson who at­tained a foot­ball schol­ar­ship this year to at­tend Jef­fer­son Col­lege in Mis­souri, passed away in a car ac­ci­dent this morn­ing in the Unit­ed States.

He was a mem­ber of our school’s Pre­mier­ship Foot­ball team and our dra­ma group, The Gen­tle­men. Our prayers go out to his friends and fam­i­ly at this dif­fi­cult time. We al­so lift up in prayer his friend and broth­er, an­oth­er past stu­dent Mick­el Rav­el­lo, who sus­tained in­juries in the ac­ci­dent. We pray for a speedy re­cov­ery and we ask our God to com­fort him as he goes through this dif­fi­cult pe­ri­od.”

Col­lege prin­ci­pal Anne Gomes-Phillips de­scribed him as a very re­spect­ful, tal­ent­ed and qui­et young man. She said he was tal­ent­ed in the per­form­ing arts as well as foot­ball.

“It is ex­treme­ly trag­ic. This is a young life with so much po­ten­tial.” Tyson’s for­mer Un­der 14 coach Nolan Bernard, who is al­so a Phys­i­cal Ed­u­ca­tion teacher at the col­lege, re­ceived the trag­ic news around 6 am.

Bernard said he did not know the cir­cum­stances of the ac­ci­dent, but apart from Rav­el­lo, an­oth­er stu­dent Myls Bar­ring­ton, a past stu­dent of Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, was al­so in­jured.

He said they were room­mates at the Mis­souri Col­lege. “They want­ed to be pro­fes­sion­al ath­letes, go on to play for the na­tion­al team, play for a team away. They pur­sued the SATs on their own and paid for it on their own. A scout from Mis­souri came down, saw them play and took the three of them.”

Bernard said he spoke with Tyson and Rav­el­lo just a month ago and they were re­al­ly ex­cit­ed. He of­fered to help them with strate­gies to bal­ance school work with foot­ball.

“He was quick, he was hum­ble and he was af­fec­tion­ate­ly called strik­er for life. He is a child any par­ent would want,” said Bernard. Tyson lived in La Brea with his fam­i­ly.