St. Kitts and Nevis is marking a landmark milestone for its youth sports community, after four promising young female cricketers from St. Kitts earned selection to Cricket West Indies’ (CWI) elite Under-19 High-Performance Camp, a key preparatory step ahead of the 2027 ICC Under-19 Women’s T20 World Cup.
The four selected players — Zara Skerritt, Aaliyah Weekes, Leanga Warner and C’Quinya Dasent — are part of a cohort of 22 top-ranked emerging female Under-19 cricketers from across the Caribbean region invited to attend the two-week intensive training program. What makes this achievement even more notable is that all four players chosen to represent the Leeward Islands at the camp hail from St. Kitts, cementing the island’s reputation as a hotbed of young cricket talent targeted for development and potential future selection to the West Indies national youth squad.
In an official statement released by the country’s Prime Minister’s Office on August 18, 2026, Prime Minister Dr. Terrance Drew extended his warm congratulations to the four young athletes, framing their selection as a source of national pride for the Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis, and clear proof of the extraordinary untapped talent held by the nation’s younger generation.
“This is a truly remarkable achievement for Zara, Aaliyah, Leanga and C’Quinya, and it is an accomplishment the entire country should celebrate deeply,” Drew noted in his remarks. “The fact that every single Leeward Islands selection comes from St. Kitts speaks volumes about the caliber of our young cricketers, and it demonstrates what young athletes can accomplish when raw talent is paired with discipline, access to opportunity, and targeted community and institutional support.”
Hosted in Antigua, the high-performance camp runs from August 17 to August 29, 2026, launching just two days after the conclusion of the CWI Rising Stars Women’s Under-19 Championship on August 15. Per CWI’s official programming framework, the camp is a core component of the organization’s structured strategy to identify, nurture and prepare the next generation of West Indies female cricketers to compete at the highest levels of international competition.
Selections for the camp were made after a comprehensive evaluation across multiple key criteria, including on-field performance throughout the regional Rising Stars Championship, technical skill assessments, 2027 World Cup eligibility, tactical game awareness, on-pitch temperament, competitive drive, physical fitness, and overall squad composition balance. The two-week program is designed to advance players across four critical domains of development: technical skill, tactical understanding, physical conditioning, and mental resilience. It also introduces participants to the rigorous performance standards and expectations that define elite international cricket.
This announcement was released as an official press release from the St. Kitts and Nevis Prime Minister’s Office and shared by local media outlet SKNVibes.com, with the outlet noting that the content was published unedited as received.