Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Port Arthur educators Kristi Lewis and Trent Johnson visited the Port Arthur News office this week to create a new sports tradition at their respective schools.

The principals at Thomas Jefferson Middle School and Abraham Lincoln Fine Arts Academy, respectively, accepted dedicated trophies for girls and boys soccer.

When the squads from each school face off against each other this year, the winners take home the commemorative trophy, to be housed at that school’s campus until the two friendly rivals battle again the next season.

The Port Arthur News trophy donations follow on the heels of an effort launched last month, when Port Arthur Independent School District Board of Trustees President Brandon Bartie made a football trophy donation to create mementos for the community’s young sporting rivalries.

“Last Thursday, our volleyball teams battled each other at the ALFAA gymnasium, and the Lady Titans at Jefferson were victorious,” said Adrienne Lott in Mid-October.

The district’s director of communications also said local football teams battled it out on the gridiron at Titan Nation Stadium.

The winner of the second game received the trophy donated by Bartie to display at its campus for a whole year until next fall’s Battle/Clash of the Titans football game.

Even though the trophy is awarded to the winner of the eighth grade game, “our hope is that we will receive trophy donations for all our teams: 8th grade volleyball, 8th grade girls and boys basketball and 8th grade girls and boys soccer,” Lott said.

The district announced, at the time, it was seeking sponsors to purchase more trophies.