On Wednesday, T&T’s sporting fraternity joined the Agostini family and his many friends in bidding farewell to one of this country’s best all round athletes and an academic. Colin Agostini, son of deceased Sedley and Ena, died last Friday. Colin was destined to be a sportsman, as his father was and so were his brothers, Sedley junior, who died in his teens and Michael who represented T&T in the Olympic Games.
Colin was the allrounder in the lot, winning races from his junior years to his adulthood in distances from 100 metres to 3 miles and he was also a brilliant swimmer and footballer. Indeed, he was captain of St Mary’s College football teams from juniors to first XI and was a member of the first T&T team to play football in England. A weird coincidence is that within a fortnight, three members of that team died. Apart from Colin, Matthew Nunes and Len Leggard all departed this life, as though they were chosen to strengthen the team in Heaven.
Colin married his childhood sweetheart, Jean, the daughter of a national footballer Pat Gomez and his marriage lasted 56 years, until death parted them. His brilliant athletic prowess did not prevent him from being a top student at CIC and most of us either did not know or overlooked his performance in the Cambridge Higher School Certificate (HC) examination in which he placed second in the island but in those days there were none of the multitude of scholarships that there are now.
The scholarship went to the boy or girl who was first in the Group: Math, Science, Languages or Modern Studies. This Church of the Nativity in Crystal Stream, Diego Martin was packed with the many people who came to say farewell to a responsible human being, true sportsman and a noble citizen. May he rest in peace.