Freeport, Bahamas - The Grand Bahama Team brought home the gold from Special Olympics Bahamas' Basketball Tournament held in New Providence over the  past weekend.

The day the two-day tournament got started on Friday December 4^th and Grand Bahama established their presence as the "cream of the crop." On Saturday, they cemented that claim as the best teams competed in the Special Olympics Invitational Basketball Tournament.

Grand Bahama, coached by Terry Wildgoose, clinched the Division One title by beating New Providence. The visiting Guadeloupe team had to settle for the bronze. Grand Bahama also secured the Division II title after they defeated the visiting Cayman Islands. New Providence ended up with the bronze. The team teams made up this year's field, but they were split in two divisions based on their competitive level. David Benjamin, the Director of Sports & Training for Special Olympics Caribbean, said he was very happy with the outcome of the tournament.  "I was very happy with the level of the competition, especially in Division II," he said. "And in the Division One, we realized that with the absence of Barbados, Grand Bahama didn't have much of a fight this year. They literally ran way with the competition.  But he noted that next year, they hope to get more Caribbean teams involved like Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago, who all have excellent basketball teams. Basil Christie, the Director of Special Olympics Bahamas said they were pleased to continue to host the tournament and they hope that in the future, the competition will only continue to get better.

"I thought the tournament was tremendously successfully," Christie said. "I was disappointed more teams couldn’t come. But anytime you can get athletes like this to compete, it's just a great thing for us. We had close to 100 athletes competing. So it was a very successful weekend."