Bevon Baptiste is often found teaching at the Purple Dragon martial arts dojo, but on Saturday he and three fellow instructors were at the Enis Adams Primary School dancing with each other.
The performance was one of many challenges that nine four-member teams undertook during the Incredible Race, an annual contest organised each year as part of Mental Health Awareness Month.
“Relating this to mental health, it’s about learning and connecting on a mental level, just like learning in martial arts,” Mr. Baptiste said after his team, the Purple Warriors, performed. “It’s 90 percent mental and 10 percent physical.”
Organisers from Community Mental Health Services were similarly pleased with this year’s contest.
“It was an absolute success,” CMHS Director Dr. Virginia Rubaine said at the end of the event, adding, “The feedback from the teams has been wonderful. They enjoyed themselves immensely.”
Last year the race attracted four teams, but that more than doubled for this year’s fifth anniversary.
Frozen T-shirts
By 8:30 a.m. the teams had already explained their costumes to a panel of judges, and they were gathered at the Noel Lloyd Positive Action Movement Park waiting on instructions.
“It’s a cruise for four on Royal Caribbean!” Dr. Rubaine yelled through a microphone, announcing the first-place prize. “Are you ready?”
She then explained the first challenge.
“You have to find a Ziploc bag with a frozen T-shirt inside,” she said. “Working together as a group, your team will be required to fully open the T-shirt. One member of the team must put on the T-shirt for the first clue.”
When she gave the go-ahead, the teams rushed to grab a T-shirt, and most began pounding them on the rocky sidewalk.
“Burst the thing, daddy! Burst it!” a member of Defiance, an all-male team, shouted.
After several minutes, the teams succeeded one by one and received their first clue.
It led to EAPS, where the dancing took place.
“Before you perform, you have the opportunity to practise and also watch the whole routine performed by the dancers,” judge Tammi Henry told competitors who were scattered around the school’s courtyard.
After performing the routine, each team lined up in front of the judges for comments.
“I quite enjoyed you. You did an awesome job,” Ms. Henry told The Beacon Warriors, a team made up of staffers from this newspaper. “I’ll give you an A for effort.”
After the dance, each team received a clue that referenced “Louie’s Mule,” a character in a popular fungi song set in Brewers Bay.
“If you hear the story, you know immediately he is talking about Brewers Bay,” Dr. Rubaine said at the end of the competition. “My cousin — Elmore Stoutt — sings that song very often, and before he sings that song he tells the story of Louie and his mule.”
Go-carts
After completing a ball-tossing challenge on the beach at Brewers Bay, participants were led to the helipad in Road Town, where they rode go-carts around the parking lot.
“The competition is very tight — tighter than my pants right now,” Kyron Todman joked, referring to a pair of tights he wore underneath his shorts.
Mr. Todman, who had just completed a lap in a go-cart, was part of a team of childhood friends from Sea Cows Bay.
“It’s very challenging intellectually and also mentally and also good nice fun,” he said of the competition.
He added that he and his teammates have known each other since childhood, so it was easy to work together.
“We work pretty well as a team. We grew up in Sea Cows Bay, so we know each other’s strengths and weaknesses and tried to use that to our advantage today,” Mr. Todman said.
Later clues led teams to Dolphin Discovery and other stops before returning them to the park.
The winners are…
In the end, Defenders Against Batterers, a team from the Social Development Department, won the competition.
“It feels awesome to win,” said Jeffrey Eddy, the lone male in the group. “I love this team.”
The group’s chemistry was crucial, said Janelle Victor, the leader.
“From this morning, we told you guys we were going to win and we won,” the social worker said, adding, “We had a little bit of everything: brains, physical strength, and persons who just wouldn’t give up no matter what.”
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